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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



FROM 
V 



HENRY DRUMMOND 



ARRANGED BY 

ELIZABETH CUEETON 



The invisible things of God from the creation of the world 
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are 
made.— Rom. i. 20. 




NOV 37 1 



37 j 



YORK 
JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS 

1892 



\ 






Copyright, 1892, by 
JAMES POTT & CO. 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



Uo 

MY DEAR FRIEND 

HELEN M. ARCHIBALD 

THIS BOOK 
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 



PREFACE. 

My first thought of writing out this 
little book of brief selections sprang from 
the desire to assist a dear friend to enjoy 
the Author's helpful books. 

The epigrammatic style lends itself to 
quotation. Taste of the spring brings 
the traveller back to the same fountain 
on a day of greater leisure. Many times 
these " Beautiful Thoughts " have en- 
lightened my darkness, and I send them 
forth with a hope and prayer that they 
may find echo in other hearts. 

E. C. 



JANUARY. 



January ist. 

The greatest among the theological 
Laws are the Laws of Nature in dis- 
guise. It will be the splendid task of 
the theology of the future to take off the 
mask and disclose to a waning scepti- 
cism the naturalness of the supernatural. 
Natural Laio, Introduction, p. 52. 



January 2d. 

No one who knows the content of 
Christianity, or feels the universal need 
of a Religion, can stand idly by while 
the intellect of his age is slowly di- 
vorcing itself from it. 

Natural Laic, Preface, p. 22. 



10 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January 3d. 

A Science without mystery is un- 
known; a Religion without mystery is 
absurd. However far the scientific 
method may penetrate the Spiritual 
World, there will always remain a re- 
gion to be explored by a scientific faith. 
Natural Law, Introduction, p. 28. 

January 4th. 

As the Supernatural becomes slowly 
Natural, will also the Natural become 
slowly Supernatural, until in the im- 
personal authority of Law men every- 
where recognize the Authority of God. 
Natural Law, Preface, p. 23. 

January 5th. 
The Spiritual Life is the gift of the 
Living Spirit. The spiritual man is no 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 11 

mere development of the Natural man. 
He is a New Creation born from Above. 

Natural Laic, Bio-genesis, p. 65. 

January 6th. 

Love is success, Love is happiness, 

Love is life. God is Love. Therefore 

love. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

January yth. 
Give me the Charity which delights 
not in exposing the weakness of others, 
but "covereth all things." 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

January 8 th. 
There is a sense of solidity about a 
Law of Nature which belongs to nothing 



12 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



else in the world. Here, at last, amid 
all that is shifting, is one thing sure ; 
one thing outside ourselves, unbiassed, 
unprejudiced, uninfluenced by like or 
dislike, by doubt or fear. . . . This 
more than anything else makes one eager 
to see the Reign of Law traced in the 
Spiritual Sphere. 

Natural Laic, Preface, p. 23. 

January gth. 

With Nature as the symbol of all of 
harmony and beauty that is known to 
man, must we still talk of the supernat- 
ural, not as a convenient word, but as a 
different order of world, . . . where 
the Reign of Mystery supersedes the 
Reign of Law? 

Natural Law, Introduction, p. 6. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 13 

January ioth. 
The Reign of Law has gradually crept 
into every department of Nature, trans- 
forming knowledge everywhere into 
Science. The process goes on, and 
Nature slowly appears to us as one 
great unity, until the borders of the 
Spiritual World are reached. 

Natural Law, Introduction, p. 13. 

January iith. 
No single fact in Science has ever 
discredited a fact in Religion. 

Natural Laic, Introduction, p. 30. 

January 12th. 
I shall never rise to the point of view 
which wishes to " raise " faith to knowl- 
edge. To me, the way of truth is to 



14 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

come through the knowledge of my 

ignorance to the submissiveness of faith, 

and then, making that my starting-place, 

to raise my knowledge into faith. 

Natural Lau\ Introduction, p. 28. Quota- 
tion from Beck : Bib. Psychol. 

January 13th. 
If the purification of Religion comes 
from Science, the purification of Science, 
in a deeper sense, shall come from Re- 
ligion. 

Natural Lau\ Introduction, p. 31. 

January 14th. 

With the demonstration of the natu- 
ralness of the supernatural, scepticism 
even may come to be regarded as un- 
scientific. And those who have wrestled 
long; for a few bare truths to ennoble life 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 15 

and rest their souls in thinking of the 
future will not be left in doubt. 

Natural Law, Introduction, p. 32. 

January 15th. 

The religion of Jesus has probably al- 
ways suffered more from those who have 
misunderstood than from those who have 
opposed it. 

Natural Law, Bio -genesis, p. 67. 

January 16th. 
It is impossible to believe that the 
amazing successions of revelations in the 
domain of Nature, during the last few 
centuries, at which the world has all 
but grown tired wondering, are to yield 
nothing for the higher life. 

Natural Late, Introduction, p. 32. 



16 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January ryth. 
Is life not full of opportunities for 
learning love? Every man and woman 
every day has a thousand of them. 

Greatest Thing in the World. 

January 18th. 
What is Science but what the Natural 
World has said to natural men ? What 
is Revelation but what the Spiritual 
World has said to Spiritual men ? 

Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 73. 

January igth. 
Life depends upon contact with Life. 
It cannot spring up out of itself. It can- 
not develop out of anything that is not 
Life. There is no Spontaneous Genei^a- 
tion in religion any more than in Na- 
ture. Christ is the source of Life in the 



FROM HENRY DBUMMOND. 17 

Spiritual World ; and he that hath the 

Son hath Life, and he that hath not the 

Son, whatever else he may have, hath not 

Life. 

Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 74. 

January 20th. 
It is a wonderful thing that here and 
there in this hard, uncharitable world, 
there should still be left a few rare souls 
who think no evil. 

Greatest Tiling in the World. 

January 21st. 
The physical Laws may explain the 
inorganic world; the biological Laws 
may account for the development of the 
organic. But of the point where they 
meet, of that strange borderland between 
the dead and the living, Science is silent, 
It is as if God had placed everything in 
2 



18 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

earth and heaven in the hands of Nature, 
but reserved a point at the genesis of 
Life for His direct appearing. 

Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 69. 

January 22d. 

Except a mineral be born "from 
above" — from the Kingdom just above 
it — it cannot enter the Kingdom just 
above it. And except a man be born 
" from above," by the same law, he can- 
not enter the Kingdom just above him. 
Natural Law, Bio genesis, p. 72. 

January 23d. 

If we try to influence or elevate others, 
we shall soon see that success is in pro- 
portion to their belief of our belief in 

them. 

Greatest Thing in the World. 



FROM HENRY DRTJMMOND. 19 



January 24th. 

The world is not a play-ground ; it is 
a school-room. Life is not a holiday, 
but an education. And the one eternal 
lesson for us all is how better we can 

love. 

Greatest Thing in the World. 

January 25th. 

What a noble gift it is, the power of 
playing upon the souls and wills of men, 
and rousing them to lofty purposes and 

holy deeds. 

Greatest Thing in the World. 

January 26th. 

The test of Religion, the final test of 
Religion, is not Religiousness, but Love. 

Greatest Thing in the World. 



20 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January 27th. 

There are not two laws of Bio-genesis, 
one for the natural, the other for the 
Spiritual ; one law is for both. Where- 
ever there is Life, Life of any kind, this 
same law holds. 

Natural Law, Bio genesis, p. 75. 



January 28th. 

The first step in peopling these worlds 
with the appropriate living forms is vir- 
tually miracle. Nor in one case is there 
less of mystery in the act than in the 
other. The second birth is scarcely less 
perplexing to the theologian than the 
first to the embryologist. 

Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 76. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 21 

January 2gth. 
There may be cases — they are prob- 
ably in the majority — where the moment 
of contact with the Living Spirit, though 
sudden, has been obscure. But the real 
moment and the conscious moment are 
two different things. Science pronounces 
nothing as to. the conscious moment. If 
it did, it would probably say that that 
was seldom the real moment. . . . 
The moment of birth in the natural world 
is not a conscious moment — we do not 
know we are born till long afterward. 
Natural Law, Bio genesis, p. 93. 

January 30th. 

The stumbling-block to most minds is 
perhaps less the mere existence of the 
unseen than the want of definition, the 



22 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS. 

apparently hopeless vagueness, and not 
least, the delight in this vagueness as 
mere vagueness by some who look upon 
this as the mark of quality in Spiritual 
things. It will be at least something to 
tell earnest seekers that the Spiritual 
World is not a castle in the air, of an 
architecture unknown to earth or heaven, 
but a fair ordered realm furnished with 
many familiar things and ruled by well- 
remembered Laws. 

Natural Law, Introduction, p. 26. 

January 31st. 
Character grows in the stream of the 
world's life. That chiefly is where men 
are to learn love. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



FEBRUARY. 



February rst. 

If a man does not exercise his arm he 
develops no biceps muscle ; and if a 
man does not exercise his soul, he ac- 
quires no muscle in his soul, no strength 
of character, no vigour of moral fibre, nor 
beauty of Spiritual growth. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

February 2d. 

A Eeligion without mystery is an ab- 
surdity. Even Science has its mysteries, 
none more inscrutable than around this 
Science of Life. It taught us sooner or 
later to expect mystery, and now we 
enter its domain. Let it be carefully 
marked, however, that the cloud does 



26 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

not fall and cover us till we have ascer- 
tained the most momentous truth of Re- 
ligion — that Christ is in the Christian. 
Natural Law, Bio -genesis, p. 88. 

February 3d. 

Religion in having mystery is in an- 
alogy with all around it. Where there 
is exceptional mystery in the Spiritual 
World it will generally be found that 
there is a corresponding mystery in the 
natural world. 

Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 91. 

February 4th. 

Even to earnest minds the difficulty 
of grasping the truth at all has always 
proved extreme. Philosophically, one 
scarcely sees either the necessity or the 
possibility of being born again. Why a 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 27 

virtuous man should not simply grow 
better and better until in his own right 
he enter the Kingdom of God is what 
thousands honestly and seriously fail to 

understand. 

Natural Late, Bio-genesis, p. 80. 

February 5th. 
Lavish Love upon our equals, where 
it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps 
we each do least of all. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

February 6th. 

Spiritual Life is not something outside 
ourselves. The idea is not that Christ 
is in heaven and that we can stretch out 
some mysterious faculty and deal with 
Him there. This is the vague form in 
which many conceive the truth, but it is 



28 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



contrary to Christ's teaching and to the 

analogy of nature. Life is definite and 

resident ; and Spiritual Life is not a 

visit from a force, but a resident tenant 

in the soul. 

Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 87. 

February yth. 
If we neglect almost any of the domes- 
tic animals, they will rapidly revert to 
wild and worthless forms. Now, the 
same thing exactly would happen in the 
case of you or me. Why should man 
be an exception to any of the laws of 

nature ? 

Natural Laic, Degeneration, p. 99. 

February 8th. 
The law of Reversion to Type runs 
through all creation. If a man neglect 
himself for a few years he will change 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 29 

into a worse and a lower man. If it is his 
body that he neglects, he will deteriorate 
into a wild and bestial savage. . . . 
If it is his mind, it will degenerate into 
imbecility and madness. ... If he 
neglect his conscience, it will run off into 
lawlessness and vice. Or, lastly, if it is 
his soul, it must inevitably atrophy, drop 

off in ruin and decay. 

Natural Laic, Degeneration, p. 99. 

February gth. 

Three possibilities of life, according to 
Science, are open to all living organisms 
— Balance, Evolution, and Degeneration. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 100. 

February ioth. 

The life of Balance is difficult. It lies 
on the verge of continual temptation, its 



30 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

perpetual adjustments become fatiguing, 
its measured virtue is monotonous and 
uninspiring. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 101. 

February nth. 

More difficult still, apparently, is the 
life of ever upward growth. Most men 
attempt it for a time, but growth is slow ; 
and despair overtakes them while the 
goal is far away. 

Natural Laic, Degeneration, p. 101. 

February 12th. 

Degeneration is easy. Why is it easy ? 
Why but that already in each man's very 
nature this principle is supreme: He 
feels within his soul a silent drifting mo- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOXD. 31 

tion impelling him downward with irre- 
sistible force. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 101. 



February 13th. 

This is Degeneration — that principle 
by which the organism, failing to de- 
velop itself, failing even to keep what it 
has got, deteriorates, and becomes more 
and more adapted to a degraded form of 

life. 

Natural Laic, Degeneration, p. 101. 



February 14th. 

It is a distinct fact by itself, which we 
can hold and examine separately, that on 
purely natural principles the soul that 
is left to itself unwatched, uncultivated, 



32 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

unredeemed, must fall away into death 
by its own nature. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 104. 

February 15th. 

If a man find the power of sin furi- 
ously at work within him, dragging his 
whole life downward to destruction, there 
is only one way to escape his fate — to 
take resolute hold of the upward power, 
and be borne by it to the opposite goal. 
Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 108. 

February 16th. 

Neglect does more for the soul than 
make it miss salvation. It despoils it of 
its capacity for salvation. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 110. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 33 

February iyth. 

Give pleasure. Lose no chance in 
giving pleasure. For that is the cease- 
less and anonymous triumph of a truly 

loving spirit. 

Greatest Thing in the World. 

February 18 th. 

If there were uneasiness there might 
be hope. If there were, somewhere 
about our soul, a something which was 
not gone to sleep like all the rest ; if 
there were a contending force anywhere ; 
if we would let even that work instead 
of neglecting it, it would gain strength 
from hour to hour, and waken up, 
one at a time, each torpid and dishon- 
oured faculty, till our whole nature be- 
came alive with strivings against self, 



34 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and every avenue was open wide for 
God. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 112. 

February 19th. 

Where is the capacity for heaven to 
come from if it be not developed on 
earth? Where, indeed, is even the 
smallest appreciation of God and 
heaven to come from when so little of 
spirituality has ever been known or 
manifested here ? 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 116. 

February 20th. 
Men tell us sometimes there is no 
such thing as an atheist. There must 
be. There are some men to whom it is 
true that there is no God. They can- 
not see God because they have no eye. 



FROM HENRY DBUMMOND. 35 

They have only an abortive organ, atro- 
phied by neglect. 

Natural Laic, Degeneration, p. 115. 

February 21st. 
Escape means nothing more than the 
gradual emergence of the higher being 
from the lower, and nothing less. It 
means the gradual putting off of all that 
cannot enter the higher state, or heaven, 
and simultaneously the putting on of 
Christ. It involves the slow completing 
of the soul and the development of the 
capacity for God. 

Natural Laic, Degeneration, p. 117. 

February 22d. 
If, then, escape is to be open to us, it 
is not to come to us somehow, vaguely. 
We are not to hope for anything start- 



36 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

ling or mysterious. It is a definite open- 
ing along certain lines wliicli are definite- 
ly marked by God, which begin at the 
Cross of Christ, and lead direct to Him. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 117. 

February 23d. 
Each man, in the silence of his own 
soul, must work out this salvation for 
himself with fear and trembling — with 
fear, realizing the momentous issues of 
his task ; with trembling, lest, before the 
tardy work be done, the voice of Death 
should summon him to stop. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 118. 

February 24th. 
So cultivate the soul that all its pow- 
ers will open out to God, and in behold- 
ing God be drawn away from sin. 

Natural Law, Degeneration., p. 118. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 37 

February 25th. 
There is a Sense of Sight in the re- 
ligious nature. Neglect this, leave it un- 
developed, and you never miss it. You 
simply see nothing. But develop it and 
you see God. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 118. 

February 26th. 

Become pure in heart. The pure in 
heart shall see God. Here, then, is one 
opening for soul-culture — the avenue 
through purity of heart to the spiritual 
seeing of God. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 119. 

February 27th. 

There is a Sense of Sound. Neglect 
this, leave it undeveloped, and you never 



38 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS. 

miss it. Develop it, and you hear God. 
And the line along which to develop it 
is known to us. Obey Christ. 

Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 119. 

February 28th. 

He who loves will rejoice in the Truth, 
rejoice not in what he has been taught 
to believe ; not in this Church's doctrine 
or in that ; not in this issue, or in that 
issue ; but " in the Truth." He will ac- 
cept only what is real ; he will strive to 
get at facts ; he will search for Truth 
with a humble and unbiassed mind, and 
cherish whatever he finds at any sacri- 
fice. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



MARCH. 



March ist. 
" Consider the lilies of the field how 
they grow." Christ made the lilies and 
He made me— both on the same broad 
principle. Both together, man and flow- 
er ... ; but as men are dull at study- 
ing themselves He points to this com- 
panion-phenomenon to teach us how to 
live a free and natural life, a life which 
God will unfold for us, without our anx- 
iety, as He unfolds the flower. 

Natural Late, Growth, p. 123. 

March 2d. 
Our efforts after Christian growth seem 
only a succession of failures, and, instead 
of rising into the beauty of holiness, our 



42 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

life is a daily heart-break and humilia- 
tion. 

Natural Law, Growth, p. 125. 

March 3d. 
The lilies grow, Christ says, of them- 
selves; they toil not, neither do they 
spin. They grow, that is, automatically, 
spontaneously, without trying, without 
fretting, without thinking. 

Natural Laic, Growth, p. 126. 

March 4th. 
Violent efforts to grow are right in 
earnestness, but wholly wrong in prin- 
ciple. There is but one principle of 
growth both for the natural and spirit- 
ual, for animal and plant, for body and 
soul. For all growth is an organic thing. 



FROM HENRY BRUMMOND. 43 

And the principle of growing in grace is 

once more this, " Consider the lilies how 

they grow." 

Natural Law, Growth, p. 125. 

March 5th. 

Earnest souls who are attempting sanc- 
tification by struggle, instead of sanctifi- 
cation by faith, might be spared much 
humiliation by learning the botany of 
the Sermon on the Mount. 

Natural Late, Growth, p. 127. 

March 6th. 

There is only one thing greater than 
happiness in the world, and that is holi- 
ness ; and it is not in our keeping ; but 
what God has put in our power is the 
happiness of those about us, and that is 



44 BE A UTIFUL TBO UGHTS 

largely to be secured by our being kind 

to them. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

March jth. 

We have all felt the brazenness of 
words without emotion, the hollowness, 
the unaccountable unpersuasiveness of 
eloquence behind which lies no love. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

March 8th. 
Patience ; kindness ; generosity ; hu- 
mility ; courtesy ; unselfishness ; good- 
temper ; guilelessness ; sincerity — these 
make up the supreme gift, the stature of 
the perfect man. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



FROM HENRY DEUMMOND. 45 

March gth. 

We hear much of love to God ; Christ 
spoke much of love to man. We make a 
great deal of peace with heaven ; Christ 
spoke much of peace on earth. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

March 10th. 
If God is spending work upon a Chris- 
tian, let him be still and know that it is 
God. And if he w T ants work, he will find 
it there— in the being still. 

Natural Law, Growth, p. 137. 

March nth. 

If the amount of energy lost in trying 

to grow were spent in fulfilling rather 

the conditions of growth, we should have 

many more cubits to show for our stature. 

Natural Laic, Growth, p. 137. 



46 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March 12th. 

The conditions of growth, then, and 
the inward principle of growth being 
both supplied by Nature, the thing man 
has to do, the little junction left for him 
to complete, is to apply the one to the 
other. He manufactures nothing; he 
earns nothing; he need be anxious for 
nothing ; his one duty is to be in these 
conditions, to abide in them, to allow 
grace to play over him, to be still and 
know that this is God. 

Natural Law, Growth, p. 138. 

March 13th. 

A man will often have to wrestle with 

his God — but not for growth. The 

Christian life is a composed life. The 

Gospel is Peace. Yet the most anxious 



FROM HENRY BRUMMOND. 47 

people in the world are Christians — 
Christians who misunderstand the nat- 
ure of growth. Life is a perpetual self- 
condemning because they are not grow- 
ing. 

Natural Law, Growth, p. 139. 

March 14th. 

All the work of the world is merely 
a taking advantage of energies already 

there. 

Natural Laiv, Growth, p. 140. 

March 15th. 

Eeligion is not a strange or added 
thing, but the inspiration of the secular 
life, the breathing of an eternal spirit 
through this temporal world. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



48 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March 16th. 

The stature of the Lord Jesus was 

not itself reached by work, and he who 

thinks to approach its mystical height 

by anxious effort is really receding 

from it. 

Natural Laic, Growth, p. 127. 

March iyth. 

For the Life must develop out accord- 
ing to its type ; and being a germ of the 
Christ-life, it must unfold into a Christ. 
Natural Law, Growth, p. 129. 

March i8th. 

The sneer at the godly man for his im- 
perfections is ill-judged. A blade is a 
small thing. At first it grows very near 
the earth. It is often soiled and crushed 



FROM HENRY DRUMMONI). 49 

and downtrodden. But it is a living 
thing, . . . and " it doth not yet ap- 
pear what it shall be." 

Natural Laic, Growth, p. 129. 

March igth. 
Christ's protest is not against work, 
but against anxious thought. 

Natural Laic, Growth, p. 136. 

March 20th. 

If God is adding to our spiritual stat- 
ure, unfolding the new nature within us, 
it is a mistake to keep twitching at the 
petals with our coarse fingers. We must 
seek to let the Creative Hand alone. 
"It is God which giveth the increase." 

Natural Law, Growth, p. 137. 



50 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March 21st. 

Love is Patience. This is the normal 
attitude of Love; Love passive, Love 
waiting to begin ; not in a hurry ; calm ; 
ready to do its work when the summons 
comes, but meantime wearing the orna- 
ment of a meek and quiet spirit. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

March 22d. 
Have you ever noticed how much of 
Christ's life was spent in doing kind 

things ? 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

March 23d. 

I wonder why it is we are not all kind- 
er than we are ! How much the world 
needs it. How easily it is done. How 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 51 

instantaneously it acts. How infallibly 
it is remembered. How superabund- 
antly it pays itself back — for there is no 
debtor in the world so honourable, so 
superbly honourable as Love. 

The Greatest lliing in the World. 

March 24th. 

To love abundantly is to live abund- 
antly, and to love forever is to live for- 
ever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably 
bound up with love. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

March 25th. 

Man is a mass of correspondences, and 
because of these, because he is alive to 
countless objects and influences to which 



52 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

lower organisms are dead, he is the most 
Hying of all creatures. 

Natural Law, Death, p. 155. 

March 26th. 

All organisms are living and dead — 
living to all within the circumference of 
their correspondences, dead to all be- 
yond. . . . Until man appears there 
is no organism to correspond with the 
whole environment. 

Natural Late, Death, p. 155. 

March 2jth. 

Is man in correspondence with the 
whole environment or is he not? . . . 
He is not. Of men generally it cannot 
be said that they are in living contact 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 53 

with that part of the environment which 
is called the spiritual world. 

Natural Late, Death, p. 156. 

March 28th. 

The animal world and the plant world 
are the same world. They are different 
parts of one environment. And the nat- 
ural and spiritual are likewise one. 

Natural Law, Death, p. 157. 

March igth. 
What we have correspondence with, 
that we call natural ; what we have little 
or no correspondence with, that we call 

spiritual. 

Natural Laic, Death, p. 157. 



54 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS. 

March 30th. 
Those who are in communion with 
God live, those who are not are dead. 

Natural Late, Death, p. 158. 

March 31st. 

This earthly mind may be of noble 
calibre, enriched by culture, high-toned, 
virtuous, and pure. But if it know not 
God? What though its correspondences 
reach to the stars of heaven or grasp the 
magnitudes of Time and Space? The 
stars of heaven are not heaven. Space 

is not God. 

Natural Law, Death, p. 158. 



APRIL 



April ist. 

We do not picture the possessor of this 
carnal mind as in any sense a monster. 
We have said he may be high-toned, vir- 
tuous, and pure. The plant is not a 
monster because it is dead to the voice 
of the bird ; nor is he a monster who is 
dead to the voice of God. The conten- 
tion at present simply is that he is Dead. 

Natural Law, Death, p. 159. 

April 2d. 

What is the creed of the Agnostic, but 
the confession of the spiritual numbness 

of humanity? 

Natural Laic, Death, p. 160. 



58 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

April 3d. 

The nescience of the Agnostic philoso- 
phy is the proof from experience that to 
be carnally minded is Death. 

Natural Laic, p. 161. 

April 4th. 

The Christian apologist never further 
misses the mark than when he refuses 
the testimony of the Agnostic to him- 
self. When the Agnostic tells me he is 
blind and deaf, dumb, torpid, and dead 
to the spiritual world, I must believe 
him. Jesus tells me that. Paul tells 
me that. Science tells me that. He 
knows nothing of this outermost circle ; 
and we are compelled to trust his sincer- 
ity as readily when he deplores it as if, 
being a man without an ear, he professed 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 59 

to know nothing of a musical world, or 
being without taste, of a w r orld of art. 
Natural Laic, Death, p. 160. 

April 5th. 
It brings no solace to the unspiritual 
man to be told he is mistaken. To say 
he is self -deceived is neither to compli- 
ment him nor Christianity. He builds 
in all sincerity who raises his altar to 
the Unknown God. He does not know 
God. With all his marvellous and com- 
plex correspondences, he is still one cor- 
respondence short. 

Natural Laic, Death, p. 161. 

April 6th. 
Only one thing truly need the Chris- 
tian envy, the large, rich, generous soul 
which " envieth not." 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



60 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

April yth. 

Whenever you attempt a good work 
you will find other men doing the same 
kind of work, and probably doing it bet- 
ter. Envy them not. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



April 8th. 

I say that man believes in a God, who 
feels himself in the presence of a Power 
which is not himself, and is immeasura- 
bly above himself, a Power in the con- 
templation of which he is absorbed, in 
the knowledge of which he finds safety 
and happiness. 

Natural Laic, Death, p. 162. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 61 

April 9th. 
What men deny is not a God. It is 
the correspondence. The very confes- 
sion of the Unknowable is itself the dull 
recognition of an Environment beyond 
themselves, and for which they feel they 
lack the correspondence. It is this want 
that makes their God the Unknown God. 
And it is this that makes them dead. 

Natural Lain, Death, p. 163. 

April roth. 

God is not confined to the outermost 
circle of environment, He lives and 
moves and has His being in the whole. 
Those who only seek Him in the further 
zone can only find a part. The Chris- 
tian who knows not God in Nature, who 
does not, that is to say, correspond with 



62 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the whole environment, most certainly is 

partially dead. 

Natural Law, Death, p. 163. 

April nth. 

After you have been kind, after Love 
has stolen forth into the world and done 
its beautiful work, go back into the shade 
again and say nothing about it. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

April 1 2th. 

The absence of the true Light means 
moral Death. The darkness of the nat- 
ural world to the intellect is not all. 
What history testifies to is, first the par- 
tial, and then the total eclipse of virtue 
that always follows the abandonment of 
belief in a personal God. 

Natural Law, Death, p. 167. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 63 

April 1 3th. 
The only greatness is unselfish love. 
, . . There is a great difference between 
trying to please and giving pleasure. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

April 14th. 
The conception of a God gives an alto- 
gether new colour to worldliness and vice. 
Worldliness it changes into heathenism, 
vice into blasphemy. The carnal mind, 
the mind which is turned away from 
God, which will not correspond with God 
— this is not moral only but spiritual 
Death. And Sin, that which separates 
from God, which disobeys God, which 
can not in that state correspond with 
God — this is hell. 

Natural Laic, Death, p. 169. 



64 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

April 15 th. 

If sin is estrangement from God, this 
very estrangement is Death. It is a 
want of correspondence. If sin is sel- 
fishness, it is conducted at the expense 
of life. Its wages are Death — " he that 
loveth his life," said Christ, " shall lose 

it." 

Natural Law, Death, p. 170. 

April 1 6th. 

Obviously if the mind turns away from 
one part of the environment it will only 
do so under some temptation to corre- 
spond with another. This temptation, at 
bottom, can only come from one source 
— the love of self. The irreligious man's 
correspondences are concentrated upon 
himself. He worships himself. Self- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 65 

gratification rather than self-denial; in- 
dependence rather than submission — 
these are the rules of life. And this is 
at once the poorest and the commonest 

form of idolatry. 

Natural Law, p. 170. 

April 17th. 
Tou will find ... that the peo- 
ple who influence you are people who 
believe in you. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

April 1 8 th. 
The development of any organism in 
any direction is dependent on its envi- 
ronment. A living cell cut off from air 
will die. A seed-germ apart from moist- 
ure and an appropriate temperature will 



66 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

make the ground its grave for centuries. 
Human nature, likewise, is subject to 
similar conditions. It can only develop 
in presence of its environment. No 
matter what its possibilities may be, no 
matter what seeds of thought or virtue, 
what germs of genius or of art, lie latent 
in its breast, until the appropriate envi- 
ronment present itself the correspond- 
ence is denied, the development dis- 
couraged, the most splendid possibilities 
of life remain unrealized, and thought 
and virtue, genius and art, are dead. 

Natural Law, p. 171. 

April 19th. 

The true environment of the moral life 
is God. Here conscience wakes. Here 
kindles love. Duty here becomes heroic ; 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 67 

and that righteousness begins to live 
which alone is to live forever. But if this 
Atmosphere is not, the dwarfed soul 
must perish for mere want of its native 
air. And its Death is a strictly natural 
Death. It is not an exceptional judg- 
ment upon Atheism. In the same cir- 
cumstances, in the same averted relation 
to their environment, the poet, the mu- 
sician, the artist, would alike perish to 
poetry, to music, and to art. 

Natural Law, p. 171. 

April 20th. 

Every environment is a cause. Its 
effect upon me is exactly proportionate 
to my correspondence with it. If I cor- 
respond with part of it, part of myself is 
influenced. If I correspond with more, 



68 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

more of myself is influenced ; if with all, 
all is influenced. If I correspond with 
the world, I become worldly; if with 
God, I become Divine. 

Natural Law, Death, p. 171. 

April 2 1 st. 

Tou can dwarf a soul just as you can 
dwarf a plant, by depriving it of a full 
environment. Such a soul for a time 
may have a "name to live." Its charac- 
ter may betray no sign of atrophy. But 
its very virtue somehow has the pallor 
of a flower that is grown in darkness, or 
as the herb which has never seen the 
sun, no fragrance breathes from its 

spirit. 

Natural Law, p. 173. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 69 

April 22d. 
I shall pass through this world but 
once. Any good thing, therefore, that 
I can do, or any kindness that I can 
show to any human being, let me do it 
now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, 
for I shall not pass this way again. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

April 23d. 

There is no happiness in having and 
getting, but only in giving . . . half 
the world is on the wrong scent in the 
pursuit of happiness. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

April 24th. 
No form of vice, not worldliness, not 
greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, 



70 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

does more to un-Christianize society than 
evil temper. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

April 25th. 

How many prodigals are kept out of 
the Kingdom of God by the unlovely 
character of those who profess to be in- 
side ! 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

April 26th. 

A want of patience, a want of kind- 
ness, a want of generosity, a want of 
courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all 
instantaneously symbolized in one flash 

of Temper. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



FROM HENRY DRTJMMOND. 71 

April 27th. 

Souls are made sweet not by taking 
the acid fluids out, but by putting some- 
thing in — a great Love, a new Spirit — 
the Spirit of Christ. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

April 28th. 

Christ, the Spirit of Christ, inter- 
penetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, 
transforms all. This only can eradicate 
what is wrong, work a chemical change, 
renovate and regenerate, and rehabili- 
tate the inner man. "Will-power does 
not change men. Time does not change 
men. Christ does. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



72 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS. 

April 2gth. 
Guilelessness is the grace for sus- 
picious people. And the possession of 
it is the great secret of personal influ- 
ence. You will find, if you think for a 
moment, that the people who influence 
you are people who believe in you. In 
an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel 
up ; but in that atmosphere they expand, 
and find encouragement and educative 

fellowship. 

TJie Greatest Thing in the World. 

April 30th. 
Do not quarrel . . . with your lot in 
life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing 
cares, its petty environment, the vexations 
you have to stand, the small and sordid 
souls you have to live and work with. 
The Greatest Thing in the World. 



MAY. 



May I st. 

The moment the new life is begun 
there comes a genuine anxiety to break 
with the old. For the former environ- 
ment has now become embarrassing. It 
refuses its dismissal from consciousness. 
It competes doggedly with the new En- 
vironment for a share of the correspon- 
dences. And in a hundred ways the 
former traditions, the memories and pas- 
sions of the past, the fixed associations 
and habits of the earlier life, now com- 
plicate the new relation. The complex 
and bewildered soul, in fact, finds itself 
in correspondence with two environ- 
ments, each with urgent but yet incom- 
patible claims. It is a dual soul living 



76 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



in a double world, a world whose inhab- 
itants are deadly enemies, and engaged 
in perpetual civil war. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 179. 

May 2d, 

How can the New Life deliver itself 
from the still-persistent past ? A ready 
solution of the difficulty would be to die. 
... If we cannot die altogether, . . . 
the most we can do is to die as much as 
we can. . . , To die to any environ- 
ment is to withdraw correspondence with 
it, to cut ourselves off, so far as possible, 
from all communication with it. So that 
the solution of the problem will simply 
be this, for the spiritual life to reverse 
continuously the processes of the natural 

life. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 180. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 77 

May 3d. 

The spiritual man haying passed from 
Death unto Life, the natural man must 
next proceed to pass from Life unto 
Death. Having opened the new set of 
correspondences, he must deliberately 
close up the old. Regeneration in short 
must be accompanied by Degeneration. 
Natural Law, Mortification, p. 181. 

May 4th 

The peculiar feature of Death by Sui- 
cide is that it is not only self-inflicted 
but sudden. And there are many sins 
which must either be dealt with sud- 
denly or not at all. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 183 



78 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May 5th. 

If the Christian is to "live unto God," 
he must " die unto sin." If he does not 
kill sin, sin will inevitably kill him. 
Recognizing this, he must set himself to 
reduce the number of his correspon- 
dences — retaining and developing those 
which lead to a fuller life, uncondition- 
ally withdrawing those w r hich in any way 
tend in an opposite direction. This 
stoppage of correspondences is a vol- 
untary act, a crucifixion of the flesh, a 

suicide. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 182. 

May 6th. 

Do not resent temptation ; do not be 
perplexed because it seems to thicken 
round you more and more, and ceases 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 79 

neither for effort nor for agony nor 
prayer. That is your practice. That is 
the practice which God appoints you ; 
and it is having its work in making you 
patient, and humble, and generous, and 
unselfish, and kind, and courteous. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

May yth. 

It is a peculiarity of the sinful state, 
that as a general rule men are linked to 
evil mainly by a single correspondence. 
Few men break the whole law. Our nat- 
ures, fortunately, are not large enough 
to make us guilty of all, and the re- 
straints of circumstances are usually 
such as to leave a loophole in the life of 
each individual for only a single habitual 
sin. But it is very easy to see how this 



80 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

reduction of our intercourse with, evil to 
a single correspondence blinds us to our 
true position. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 186. 

May 8th. 

One little weakness, we are apt to 
fancy, all men must be allowed, and we 
even claim a certain indulgence for that 
apparent necessity of nature which we 
call our besetting sin. Yet to break with 
the lower environment at all, to many, is 
to break at this single point. 

Natural Laic, p. 186. 

May gth. 

There may be only one avenue between 
the new life and the old, it may be but a 
small and subterranean passage, but this 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 81 

is sufficient to keep tlie old life in. So 
long as that remains tlie victim is not 
" dead unto sin," and therefore he can- 
not " live unto God." 

Natural Laic, p. 187. 

May roth. 

Do not grudge the hand that is mould- 
ing the still too shapeless image within 
you. It is growing more beautiful, 
though you see it not, and every touch 
of temptation may add to its perfection. 
Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do 
not isolate yourself. Be among men, 
and among things, and among troubles, 
and difficulties, and obstacles. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



82 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May nth. 

Contemplate the love of Christ, and 
you will love. Stand before that mirror, 
reflect Christ's character, and you will be 
changed into the same image from ten- 
derness to tenderness. There is no other 
way. You cannot love to order. You 
can only look at the lovely object, and 
fall in love with it, and grow into like- 
ness to it. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

May 1 2th. 

In the natural world it only requires a 
single vital correspondence of the body 
to be out of order to ensure Death. It 
is not necessary to have consumption, 
diabetes, and an aneurism to bring the 
body to the grave, if it have heart disease. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 83 



He who is fatally diseased in one organ 
necessarily pays the penalty with his life, 
though all the others be in perfect health. 
And such, likewise, are the mysterious 
unity and correlation of functions in the 
spiritual organism that the disease of 
one member may involve the ruin of the 

whole. 

Natural Laic, Mortification, p. 187. 



May 13th. 

To break altogether, and at every 
point, with the old environment, is a 
simple impossibility. So long as the 
regenerate man is kept in this world he 
must find the old environment at many 
points a severe temptation. 

Natural Laic, Mortification, p. 190. 



84 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May 14th. 

Power over very many of the common- 
est temptations is only to be won by de- 
grees, and however anxious one might be 
to apply the summary method to every 
case, he soon finds it impossible in prac- 
tice. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 190. 



May 15 th. 

The ill-tempered person . . . can 
make very little of his environment. How- 
ever he may attempt to circumscribe it in 
certain directions, there will always re- 
main a wide and ever-changing area to 
stimulate his irascibility. His environ- 
ment, in short, is an inconstant quantity, 
and his most elaborate calculations and 



FROM HENRY DRUMMONI). 85 

precautions must often and suddenly fail 

him. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 191. 

May 1 6 th. 

What the ill-tempered person has to 
deal with, . . . mainly, is the corre- 
spondence, the temper itself. And that, 
he well knows, involves a long and humil- 
iating discipline. The case is not at all a 
surgical but a medical one, and the knife 
is here of no more use than in a fever. 
A specific irritant has poisoned his veins. 
And the acrid humours that are breaking 
out all over the surface of his life are 
only to be subdued by a gradual sweet- 
ening of the inward spirit. 

Natural Laic, Mortification, p. 191. 



86 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May iytb. 
The man whose blood is pure has noth- 
ing to fear. So he whose spirit is puri- 
fied and sweetened becomes proof against 
these germs of sin. " Anger, wrath, 
malice and railing" in such a soil can 
find no root. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 192. 

May 1 8th. 
The Mortification of a member . . . 
is based on the Law of Degeneration. 
The useless member here is not cut off, 
but simply relieved as much as possible 
of all exercise. This encourages the 
gradual decay of the parts, and as it is 
more and more neglected it ceases to be 
a channel for life at all. So an organism 
" mortifies " its members. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 193. 



FROM HENRY DRTTMMOND. 87 

May igtb. 
Man's spiritual life consists in the 
number and fulness of his correspond- 
ences with God. In order to develop 
these he may be constrained to insulate 
them, to enclose them from the other 
correspondences, to shut himself in with 
them. In many ways the limitation of 
the natural life is the necessary condi- 
tion of the full enjoyment of the spirit- 
ual life. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 195. 

May 20th. 

No man is called to a life of self-de- 
nial for its own sake. It is in order to a 
compensation which, though sometimes 
difficult to see, is always real and always 
proportionate. No truth, perhaps, in 
practical religion is more lost sight of. 



88 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

We cherish somehow a lingering rebel- 
lion against the doctrine of self-denial — 
as if our nature, or our circumstances, or 
our conscience, dealt with us severely in 
loading us with the daily cross. But is 
it not plain after all that the life of self- 
denial is the more abundant life — more 
abundant just in proportion to the am- 
pler crucifixion of the narrower life ? Is 
it not a clear case of exchange — an ex- 
change, however, where the advantage is 
entirely on our side ? "We give up a cor- 
respondence in which there is a little 
life to enjoy a correspondence in which 
there is an abundant life. What though 
we sacrifice a hundred such correspond- 
ences? We make but the more room 
for the great one that is left. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 195. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 89 

May 2 1 st. 
Do not spoil your life at the outset 
with unworthy and impoverishing cor- 
respondences ; and if it is growing truly 
rich and abundant, be very jealous of 
ever diluting its high eternal quality 
with anything of earth. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 196. 

May 22d. 
To concentrate upon a few great cor- 
respondences, to oppose to the death the 
perpetual petty larceny of our life by 
trifles — these are the conditions for the 
highest and happiest life. . . . The 
penalty of evading self-denial also is just 
that we get the lesser instead of the 
larger good. The punishment of sin is 
inseparably bound up with itself. 

Natural Laic, Mortification, p. 196. 



90 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May 23d. 

Each man has only a certain amount 
of life, of time, of attention — a definite 
measurable quantity. If he gives any of 
it to this life solely it is wasted. There- 
fore Christ says, Hate life, limit life, lest 
you steal your love for it from some- 
thing that deserves it more. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 197. 



May 24th 

To refuse to deny one's self is just to 
be left with the self undenied. When 
the balance of life is struck, the self will 
be found still there. The discipline of 
life was meant to destroy this self, but 
that discipline having been evaded — and 
we all to some extent have opportunities. 



FB03T HENRY DRTTMMOND. 91 

and too often exercise them, of taking 
the narrow path by the shortest cuts — 
its purpose is baulked. But the soul is 
the loser. In seeking to gain its life it 
has really lost it. 

Natural Laio, Mortification, p. 196. 

May 25th. 

Suppose we deliberately made up our 
minds as to what things we were hence- 
forth to allow to become our life ? Sup- 
pose we selected a given area of our en- 
vironment and determined once for all 
that our correspondences should go to 
that alone, fencing in this area all round 
with a morally impassable wall? True, to 
others, we should seem to live a poorer 
life ; they would see that our environ- 
ment was circumscribed, and call us nar- 



92 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

row because it was narrow. But, well- 
chosen, this limited life would be really 
the fullest life ; it would be rich in the 
highest and worthiest, and poor in the 
smallest and basest, correspondences. 
Natural Laic, Mortification, p. 199. 

May 26th. 

The well-defined spiritual life is not 
only the highest life, but it is also the 
most easily lived. The whole cross is 
more easily carried than the half. It is 
the man who tries to make the best of 
both worlds who makes nothing of either. 
And he who seeks to serve two masters 
misses the benediction of both. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 199. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 93 

May 27th. 
'You will find, as you look back upon 
your life, that the moments that stand 
out, the moments when you have really 
lived, are the moments when you have 
done things in a spirit of love. As 
memory scans the past, above and be- 
yond all the transitory pleasures of life, 
there leap forward those supreme hours 
when you have been enabled to do unno- 
ticed kindnesses to those round about 
you, things too trifling to speak about, 
but which you feel have entered into 
your eternal life. 

The Greatest Tiling in the World, p. 60. 

May 28th. 

No man can become a saint in his 
sleep ; and to fulfil the condition re- 



94 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

quired demands a certain amount of 
prayer and meditation and time, just as 
improvement in any direction, bodily or 
mental, requires preparation and care. 
Address yourselves to that one thing ; 
at any cost have this transcendent char- 
acter exchanged for yours. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 60. 

May 2gth. 

He who has taken his stand, who has 
drawn a boundary line, sharp and deep, 
about his religious life, who has marked 
off all beyond as for ever forbidden 
ground to him, finds the yoke easy and 
the burden light. For this forbidden 
environment comes to be as if it were 
not. His faculties falling out of corre- 
spondence, slowdy lose their sensibilities. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 95 



And the balm of Death numbing his 
lower nature releases him for the scarce 
disturbed communion of a higher life. 
So even here to die is gain. 

Natural Law, Mortification, p. 199. 

May 30th. 

Remain side by side with Him who 
loved us, and gave Himself for us, and 
you too will become a permanent mag- 
net, a permanently attractive force ; and 
like Him you will draw all men unto 
you, like Him you will be drawn unto 
all men. That is the inevitable effect of 
Love. Any man who fulfils that cause 
must have that effect produced in him. 

TJie Greatest Thing in the Wo?id, p. 45. 



96 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS. 

May 31st. 

Try to give up the idea that religion 
comes to us by chance, or by mystery, 
or by caprice. It comes to us by natural 
law, or by supernatural law, for all law 
is Divine. 

Tlie Greatest Tiling in the World, p. 46. 



JUNE. 



June ist. 
We love others, we love everybody, we 
love our enemies, because He first loved 
us. . . . And that is how the love 
of God melts down the unlovely heart in 
man, and begets in him the new creature, 
who is patient and humble and gentle 
and unselfish. 

The Greatest Tiring in the World, p. 46. 

June 2d. 
The belief in Science as an aid to faith 
is not yet ripe enough to warrant men in 
searching there for witnesses to the high- 
est Christian truths. The inspiration of 
Nature, it is thought, extends to the 
humbler doctrines alone. And yet the 



100 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



reverent inquirer who guides his steps in 
the right direction may find even now, in 
the still dim twilight of the scientific 
world, much that will illuminate and in- 
tensify his sublimest faith. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 204. 

June 3d. 

Life becomes fuller and fuller, richer 
and richer, more and more sensitive and 
responsive to an ever-widening Environ- 
ment as we rise in the chain of being. 
Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 207. 

June 4th. 

Before we reach an Eternal Life we 
must pass beyond that point at which 
all ordinary correspondences inevitably 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 101 

cease. We must find an organism so 
high and complex, that at some point in 
its development it shall have added a 
correspondence which organic death is 
powerless to arrest. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 213. 

June 5th. 

Uninterrupted correspondence with a 
perfect Environment is Eternal Life, ac- 
cording to Science. " This is Life Eter- 
nal, ' said Christ, "that they may know 
Thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
Christ whom Thou hast sent." Life 
Eternal is to know God. To know God 
is to " correspond " with God. To cor- 
respond with God is to correspond with 
a Perfect Environment. And the organ- 
ism which attains to this, in the nature 



102 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of things, must live forever. Here is 
" eternal existence and eternal knowl- 
edge." 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 215. 



June 6th. 

To find a new Environment again and 
cultivate relation with it is to find a new 
Life. To live is to correspond, and to 
correspond is to live. So much is true in 
Science. But it is also true in Religion. 
And it is of great importance to observe 
that to Religion also the conception of 
Life is a correspondence. No truth of 
Christianity has been more ignorantly or 
wilfully travestied than the doctrine of 
Immortality. The popular idea, in spite 
of a hundred protests, is that Eternal 
Life is to live forever. . . . We are 



FROM HENRY DRUMMONB. 103 

told that Life Eternal is not to live. 
This is Life Eternal — to knoiv. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 216. 



June yth. 

From time to time the taunt is thrown 
at Religion, not unseldom from lips 
which Science ought to have taught 
more caution, that the Future Life of 
Christianity is simply a prolonged ex- 
istence, an eternal monotony, a blind and 
indefinite continuance of being. The 
Bible never could commit itself to any 
such empty platitude ; nor could Chris- 
tianity ever offer to the world a hope so 
colourless. Not that Eternal Life has 
nothing to do with everlastingness. 
That is part of the conception. And it 



104 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



is this aspect of the question that first 
arrests us in the field of Science. 

Natural Laic, Eternal Life, p. 216. 



June 8th. 

Science speaks to us indeed of much 
more than numbers of years. It defines 
degrees of Life. It explains a widening 
Environment. It unfolds the relation 
between a widening Environment and 
increasing complexity in organisms. 
And if it has no absolute contribution 
to the content of Religion, its analogies 
are not limited to a point. It yields to 
Immortality, and this is the most that 
Science can do in any case, the broad 
framework for a doctrine. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 217. 



FROM HENRY DRTJMMOND. 105 



June gth. 

To correspond with the God of Sci- 
ence, the Eternal Unknowable, would 
be everlasting existence ; to correspond 
with " the true God and Jesus Christ," 
is Eternal Life. The quality of the 
Eternal Life alone makes the heaven ; 
mere everlastingness might be no boon. 
Even the brief span of the temporal 
life is too long for those who spend its 
years in sorrow. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 220. 

June iotb. 
To Christianity, "he that hath the 
Son of God hath Life, and he that hath 
not the Son hath not Life." This, as 
we take it, defines the correspondence 
which is to bridge the grave. This is 



106 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



the clue to the nature of the Life that 
lies at the back of the spiritual organ- 
ism. And this is the true solution of 
the mystery of Eternal Life. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 227. 

June nib. 
The relation between the spiritual 
man and his Environment is, in theo- 
logical language, a filial relation. With 
the new Spirit, the filial correspondence, 
he knows the Father — and this is Life 

Eternal. 

Natural Late, Eternal Life, p. 229. 

June 1 2th. 
It takes the Divine to know the Di- 
vine — but in no more mysterious sense 
than it takes the human to understand 



FROM HENRY DEUMMQNB. 107 

the human. The analogy, indeed, for 
the whole field here has been finely ex- 
pressed already by Paul : "What man," 
he asks, " knoweth the things of a man, 
save the spirit of man which is in him ? 
Even so the things of God knoweth no 
man, but the Spirit of God. Now we 
have received, not the spirit of the 
world, but the spirit which is of God ; 
that we might know the things that are 
freely given to us of God." — I. Cor. ii. 
11, 12. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 229. 



June 13th. 

To go outside what we call Nature is 
not to go outside Environment. Nature, 
the natural Environment, is only a part 
of Environment. There is another large 



108 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

part, which, though some profess to have 
no correspondence with it, is not on 
that account unreal, or even unnatural. 
The mental and moral world is unknown 
to the plant. But it is real. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 232. 

June 14th. 

Things are natural or supernatural 
simply according to where one stands. 
Man is supernatural to the mineral ; 
God is supernatural to the man. When 
a mineral is seized upon by the living 
plant and elevated to the organic king- 
dom, no trespass against Nature is com- 
mitted. It merely 'enters a larger Envi- 
ronment, which before was supernatural 
to it, but which now is entirely natural. 
When the heart of a man, again, is 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 109 



seized upon by the quickening Spirit of 
God, no further violence is done to natu- 
ral law. It is another case of the inor- 
ganic, so to speak, passing into the or- 
ganic. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 232. 



June 15th. 

Correspondence in any case is the gift 
of Environment. The natural Environ- 
ment gives men their natural faculties ; 
the spiritual affords them their spiritu- 
al faculties. It is natural for the spir- 
itual Environment to supply the spiritu- 
al faculties ; it would be quite unnatural 
for the natural Environment to do it. 
The natural law of Bio-genesis forbids 
it ; the moral fact that the finite cannot 
comprehend the Infinite is against it ; 



110 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



the spiritual principle that flesh and 
blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of 
God renders it absurd. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 233. 



June 1 6th. 

Organisms are not added to by accre- 
tion, as in the case of minerals, but by 
growth. And the spiritual faculties are 
organized in the spiritual protoplasm of 
the soul, just as other faculties are or- 
ganized in the protoplasm of the body. 
Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 233. 

June ljth. 

It ought to be placed in the forefront 
of all Christian teaching that Christ's 
mission on earth was to give men Life. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. Ill 

" I am come," He said, " that ye might 
have Life, and that ye might have it 
more abundantly." And that He meant 
literal Life, literal spiritual and Eternal 
Life, is clear from the whole course of 
His teaching and acting. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 235. 

June 1 8th. 

The effort to detect the living Spirit 
must be at least as idle as the attempt to 
subject protoplasm to microscopic exam- 
ination in the hope of discovering Life. 
We are warned, also, not to expect too 
much. " Thou canst not tell whence it 
cometh or whither it goeth." 

Natural Laic, Eternal Life, p. 237. 



112 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

June igth. 

Many men would be religious if they 
knew where to begin ; many would be 
more religious if they were sure where it 
would end. It is not indifference that 
keeps some men from God, but igno- 
rance. " Good Master, what must I do 
to inherit Eternal Life ? " is still the 
deepest question of the age. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 237. 

June 2otb. 
The voice of God and the voice of 
Nature. I cannot be wrong if I listen 
to them. Sometimes, when uncertain of 
a voice from its very loudness, we catch 
the missing syllable in the echo. In 
God and Nature we have Voice and 
Echo. When I hear both, I am assured, 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 113 



My sense of hearing does not betray me 
twice. I recognize the Voice in the 
Echo, the Echo makes me certain of the 
Voice ; I listen and I know. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 238. 

June 2 1 st. 
The soul is a living organism. And 
for any question as to the soul's Life we 
must appeal to Life-science. And what 
does the Life-science teach ? That if I 
am to inherit Eternal Life, I must culti- 
vate a correspondence with the Eternal. 
Natural Lair, Eternal Life, p. 239. 

June 22d. 
All knowledge lies in Environment. 
When I want to know about minerals I 
go to minerals. When I want to know 

8 



114 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

about flowers I go to flowers. And th&y 
tell me. In their own way they speak 
to rae, each in its own way, and each for 
itself — not the mineral for the flower, 
which is impossible, nor the flower for 
the mineral, which is also impossible. 
So if I want to know about Man, I go to 
his part of the Environment. And he 
tells me about himself, not as the plant 
or the mineral, for he is neither, but in 
his own way. And if I want to know 
about God, I go to His part of the En- 
vironment. And He tells me about 
Himself, not as a Man, for He is not 
Man, but in His own way. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 239. 

June 23d. 

Just as naturally as the flower and the 
mineral and the Man, each in their own 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 115 

way, tell me about themselves, He tells 
me about Himself. He very strangely 
condescends indeed in making things 
plain to me, actually assuming for a time 
the Form of a Man that I at my poor 
level may better see Him. This is my 
opportunity to know Him. This incar- 
nation is God making Himself accessi- 
ble to human thought — God opening to 
Man the possibility of correspondence 
through Jesus Christ. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 240. 

June 24th. 

Having opened correspondence with 
the Eternal Environment, the subse- 
quent stages are in the line of all other 
normal development. We have but to 
continue, to deepen, to extend, and to 



116 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

enrich the correspondence that has been 
begun. And we shall soon find to our 
surprise that this is accompanied by an- 
other and parallel process. The action 
is not all upon our side. The Environ- 
ment also will be found to correspond. 
Natural Laic, Eternal Life, p. 241. 

June 25th. 

Let us look for the influence of Envi- 
ronment on the spiritual nature of him 
who has opened correspondence with 
God. Reaching out his eager and quick- 
ened faculties to the spiritual world 
around him, shall he not become spirit- 
ual? In vital contact with Holiness, 
shall he not become hoty ? Breathing 
now an atmosphere of ineffable Purity, 
shall he miss becoming pure ? Walking 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 117 

with God from day to day, shall he fail 
to be taught of God ? 

Natural Laic, Eternal Life, p. 242. 

June 26th. 

Growth in grace is sometimes de- 
scribed as a strange, mystical, and unin- 
telligible process. It is mystical, but 
neither strange nor unintelligible. It 
proceeds according to Natural Law, and 
the leading factor in sanctification is In- 
fluence of Environment. 

Natural Laic, Eternal Life, p. 242. 

June 2jth. 

Will the evolutionist who admits the 
regeneration of the frog under the modi- 
fying influence of a continued correspon- 
dence with a new environment, care to 



118 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

question the possibility of the soul ac- 
quiring such a faculty as that of Prayer, 
the marvellous breathing-function of the 
new creature, when in contact with the 
atmosphere of a besetting God ? Is the 
change from the earthly to the heavenly 
more mysterious than the change from 
the aquatic to the terrestrial mode of 
life? Is Evolution to stop with the 
organic ? If it be objected that it has 
taken ages to perfect the function in the 
batrachian, the reply is, that it will take 
ages to perfect the function in the Chris- 
tian. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p.. 244. 



June 28th. 

We have indeed spoken of the spirit- 
ual correspondence as already perfect — 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 119 



but it is perfect only as the bud is per- 
fect. " It doth not yet appear what it 
shall be," any more than it appeared a 
million years ago what the evolving 
batrachian would be. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 244. 

June 2gth. 

In a sense, all that belongs to Time 
belongs also to Eternity ; but these lower 
correspondences are in their nature un- 
fitted for an Eternal Life. Even if they 
were perfect in their relation to their 
Environment, they would still not be 
Eternal. . . . An Eternal Life de- 
mands an Eternal Environment. 

Natural Laic, Eternal Life, p. 245. 



1 20 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS. 

June 30th. 

The final preparation . . . for the 
inheriting of Eternal Life must consist 
in the abandonment of the non-eternal 
elements. These must be unloosed and 
dissociated from the higher elements. 
And this is effected by a closing catas- 
trophe — Death. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 248. 



JULY. 



July ist. 
" Perfect correspondence," according 
to Mr. Herbert Spencer, would be " per- 
fect Life." To abolish Death, therefore, 
all that would be necessary would be to 
abolish Imperfection. But it is the 
claim of Christianity that it can abolish 
Death. And it is significant to notice 
that it does so by meeting this very de- 
mand of Science — it abolishes Imper- 
fection. 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 249. 

July 2d. 
The part of the organism which be- 
gins to get out of correspondence with 
the Organic Environment is the onlv 



124 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



part which is in vital correspondence 
with it. Though a fatal disadvantage to 
the natural man to be thrown out of 
correspondence with this Environment, 
it is of inestimable importance to the 
spiritual man. For so long as it is 
maintained the way is barred for a fur- 
ther Evolution. And hence the condi- 
tion necessary for the further Evolution 
is that the spiritual be released from the 
natural. That is to say, the condition of 
the further Evolution is Death, 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 249. 

July 3d. 

The sifting of the correspondences is 

done by Nature. This is its last and 

greatest contribution to mankind. Over 

the mouth of the grave the perfect and 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 125 



the imperfect submit to their final sep- 
aration. Each goes to its own — earth to 
earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, 
Spirit to Spirit. "The dust shall re- 
turn to the earth as it was ; and the 
Spirit shall return unto God who gave 

it." 

Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 249. 



July 4th. 

Few things are less understood than 
the conditions of the spiritual life. The 
distressing incompetence of which most 
of us are conscious in trying to work out 
our spiritual experience is due perhaps 
less to the diseased will which we com- 
monly blame for it than to imperfect 
knowledge of the right conditions. It 
does not occur to us how natural the 



126 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

spiritual is. We still strive for some 
strange transcendent thing ; we seek to 
promote life by methods as unnatural as 
they prove unsuccessful ; and only the 
utter incomprehensibility of the whole 
region prevents us seeing fully — what we 
already half-suspect — how completely we 
are missing the road. 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 256. 

July 5th. 
Living in the spiritual world ... is 
just as simple as living in the natural 
world ; and it is the same kind of simplic- 
ity. It is the same kind of simplicity for 
it is the same kind of world — there are 
not two kinds of worlds. The conditions 
of life in the one are the conditions of life 
in the other. And till these conditions 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 127 

are sensibly grasped, as the conditions of 
all life, it is impossible that the personal 
effort after the highest life should be 
other than a blind struggle carried on in 
fruitless sorrow and humiliation. 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 257. 

July 6th. 

Heredity and Environment are the 
master-influences of the organic world. 
These have made all of us what we are. 
These forces are still ceaselessly playing 
upon all our lives. And he who truly 
understands these influences ; he who 
has decided how much to allow to each ; 
he who can regulate new forces as they 
arise, or adjust them to the old, so direct- 
ing them as at one moment to make them 
co-operate, at another to counteract one 



128 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



another, understands the rationale of 
personal development. 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 255. 

July 7th. 

To seize continuously the opportunity 
of more and more perfect adjustment to 
better and higher conditions, to balance 
some inward evil with some purer in- 
fluence acting from without, in a word 
to make our Environment at the same 
time that it is making us — these are the 
secrets of a well-ordered and successful 

life. 

Natural Laic, Environment, p. 256. 

July 8th. 

In the spiritual world . . . the 
subtle influences which form and trans- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 129 

form the soul are Heredity and Environ- 
ment. And here especially, where all is 
invisible, where much that we feel to be 
real is yet so ill defined, it becomes of 
vital practical moment to clarify the at- 
mosphere as far as possible with concep- 
tions borrowed from the natural life. 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 256. 

July gth. 
What Heredity has to do for us is de- 
termined outside ourselves. No man 
can select his own parents. But every 
man to some extent can choose his own 
Environment. His relation to it, how- 
ever largely determined by Heredity in 
the first instance, is always open to alter- 
ation. And so great is his control over 
Environment and so radical its influence 




130 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

oyer him, that he can so direct it as 
either to undo, modify, perpetuate, or in- 
tensify the earlier hereditary influences 
within certain limits. 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 257. 

July ioth. 
One might show how the moral man is 
acted upon and changed continuously by 
the influences, secret and open, of his 
surroundings, by the tone of society, 
by the company he keeps, by his occupa- 
tion, by the books he reads, by Nature, 
by all, in short, that constitutes the ha- 
bitual atmosphere of his thoughts and the 
little world of his daily choice. Or one 
might go deeper still and prove how the 
spiritual life also is modified from out- 
side sources — its health or disease, its 
growth or decay, all its changes for bet- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 131 

ter or for worse being determined by the 
varying and successive circumstances in 
which the religious habits are cultivated. 

Natural Laic, Environment, p. 260. 

July nth. 
In the spiritual world ... he will 
be wise who courts acquaintance with the 
most ordinary and transparent facts of 
Nature ; and in laying the foundations 
for a religious life he will make no un- 
worthy beginning who carries with him 
an impressive sense of so obvious a 
truth as that without Environment there 
can be no life. 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 264. 

July 1 2th. 

There is in the spiritual organism a 
principle of life ; but that is not self -ex- 



132 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

istent. It requires a second factor, a 
something in which to live and move 
and have its being; an Environment. 
Without this it cannot live or move or 
have any being. Without Environment 
the soul is as the carbon without the 
oxygen, as the fish without the water, as 
the animal frame without the extrinsic 
conditions of vitality. 

Natural Laic, Environment, p. 264. 

July 13th. 

What is the Spiritual Environment ? 
It is God. Without this, therefore, there 
is no life, no thought, no energy, nothing 
— "without Me ye can do nothing." 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 265. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 133 

July 14th. 

The cardinal error in the religious life 
is to attempt to live without an Environ- 
ment. Spiritual experience occupies it- 
self, not too much, but too exclusively, 
with one factor— the soul. "We delight 
in dissecting this much-tortured faculty, 
from time to time, in search of a certain 
something which we call our faith — for- 
getting that faith is but an attitude, an 
empty hand for grasping an environing 

Presence. 

Natural Law, Environment, p 265. 

July 15th. 

When we feel the need of a power by 
which to overcome the world, how often 
do we not seek to generate it within our- 
selves by some forced process, some fresh 



134 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

girding of the will, some strained activi- 
ty which only leaves the soul in further 
exhaustion ? 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 265. 

July 1 6th. 
To examine ourselves is good ; but 
useless unless we also examine Environ- 
ment. To bewail our weakness is right, 
but not remedial. The cause must be 
investigated as well as the result. And 
yet, because we never see the other half 
of the problem, our failures even fail to 
instruct us. After each new collapse we 
begin our life anew, but on the old con- 
ditions; and the attempt ends as usual 
in the repetition — in the circumstances 
the inevitable repetition — of the old dis- 
aster. 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 265. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 135 

July iyth. 

After seasons of much discouragement, 
with the sore sense upon us of our abject 
feebleness, we do confer with ourselves, 
insisting for the thousandth time, "My 
soul, wait thou only upon God." But, the 
lesson is soon forgotten. The strength 
supplied we speedily credit to our own 
achievement ; and even the temporary 
success is mistaken for a symptom of im- 
proved inward vitality. Once more we 
become self-existent. Once more we go 
on living without an Environment. And 
once more, after days of wasting without 
repairing, of spending without replenish- 
ing, we begin to perish with hunger, only 
returning to God again, as a last resort, 
when we have reached starvation point. 
Natural Law, Environment, p. 266. 



136 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

My 1 8th. 
Why this unscientific attempt to sus- 
tain life for weeks at a time without an 
Environment? It is because we have 
never truly seen the necessity for an En- 
vironment. We have not been working 
with a principle. We are told to " wait 
only upon God," but we do not know 
why. It has never been as clear to us 
that without God the soul will die as 
that without food the body will perish. 
In short, we have never comprehended 
the doctrine of the Persistence of Force. 
Instead of being content to transform 
energy we have tried to create it. 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 266. 

July i gib. 
Whatever energy the soul expends 
must first be " taken into it from with- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 137 

out." We are not Creators, but creat- 
ures ; God is our refuge and strength. 
Communion with God, therefore, is a 
scientific necessity ; and nothing will 
more help the defeated spirit which is 
struggling in the wreck of its religious 
life than a common-sense hold of this 
biological principle that without Envi- 
ronment he can do nothing. 

Natural Law, Environment, p. 267. 

July 20th. 
"Who has not come to the conclusion 
that he is but a part, a fraction of some 
larger whole ? Who does not miss, at 
every turn of his life, an absent God? 
That man is but a part, he knows, for 
there is room in him for more. That 
God is the other part, he feels, because at 
times He satisfies his need. Who does 



138 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

not tremble often under that sicklier 
symptom of his incompleteness, his 
want of spiritual energy, his helpless- 
ness with sin ? But now he understands 
both — the void in his life, the power- 
lessness of his will. He understands 
that, like all other energy, Spiritual pow- 
er is contained in Environment. He 
finds here at last the true root of all hu- 
man frailty, emptiness, nothingness, sin. 
This is why "without Me ye can do 
nothing." Powerlessness is the normal 
state, not only of this, but of every 
organism — of every organism apart from 

its Environment. 

Natural Law, p. 268. 

July 2 1 st. 
Friendship is the nearest thing we 
know to what religion is. God is love. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 139 

And to make religion akin to Friendship 
is simply to give it the highest expres- 
sion conceivable by man. 

The Changed Life, p. 49. 

July 22d. 

The entire dependence of the soul 
upon God is not an exceptional mystery, 
nor is man's helplessness an arbitrary 
and unprecedented phenomenon. It is 
the law of all Nature. The spiritual 
man is not taxed beyond the natural. 
He is not purposely handicapped by sin- 
gular limitations or unusual incapaci- 
ties. God has not designedly made the 
religious life as hard as possible. The 
arrangements for the spiritual life are the 
same as for the natural life. When, in 
their hours of unbelief, men challenge 



140 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

their Creator for placing the obstacle of 
human frailty in the way of their highest 
development, their protest is against the 
order of Nature. 

Natural Law, p. 269. 

July 23d. 

The organism must either depend on 
his environment, or be self-sufficient. 
But who will not rather approve the ar- 
rangement by which man in his creatural 
life may have unbroken access to an In- 
finite Power? What soul will seek to 
remain self-luminous when it knows 
that " The Lord God is a Sun ? " Who 
will not willingly exchange his shal- 
low vessel for Christ's well of living 

water. 

Natural Law, p 270, 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 141 

July 24th. 
The New Testament is nowhere more 
impressive than where it insists on the 
fact of man's dependence. In its view 
the first step in religion is for man to 
feel his helplessness. Christ's first be- 
atitude is to the poor in spirit. The 
condition of entrance into the spiritual 
kingdom is to possess the child-spirit — 
that state of mind combining at once the 
profoundest helplessness with the most 
artless feeling of dependence. 

Natural Law, p. 271. 

July 25th. 

Fruit-bearing without Christ is not an 
improbability, but an impossibility. As 
well expect the natural fruit to flourish 
without air and heat, without soil and 



142 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

sunshine. How thoroughly also Paul 
grasped this truth is apparent from a 
hundred pregnant passages in which he 
echoes his Master's teaching. To him 
life was hid with Christ in God. And 
that he embraced this, not as a theory 
but as an experimental truth, we gather 
from his constant confession, "When I 
am weak, then am I strong." 

Natural Law, p. 271. 

July 26th. 

One result of the due apprehension of 
our personal helplessness will be that we 
shall no longer waste our time over the 
impossible task of manufacturing energy 
for ourselves. Our science will bring to 
an abrupt end the long series of severe 
experiments in which we have indulged in 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 143 

the hope of finding a perpetual motion. 
And having decided upon this once for 
all, our first step in seeking a more sat- 
isfactory state of things must be to find 
a new source of energy. Following Na- 
ture, only one course is open to us. We 
must refer to Environment. The natu- 
ral life owes all to Environment, so must 
the spiritual. Now the Environment of 
the spiritual life is God. As Nature, 
therefore, forms the complement of the 
natural life, God is the complement of 
the spiritual. 

Natural Law, p. 272. 

July 2jth. 

Do not think that nothing is happen- 
ing because you do not see yourself 
grow, or hear the whirr of the machin- 



144 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS' 

ery. All great things grow noiselessly. 
You can see a mushroom grow, but never 
a child. Mr. Darwin tells us that Evolu- 
tion proceeds by " numerous, successive, 
and slight modifications." 

The Changed Life, p. 54. 

July 28th*. 

We fail to praise the ceaseless minis- 
try of the great inanimate world around 
us only because its kindness is unobtru- 
sive. Nature is always noiseless. All 
her greatest gifts are given in secret. 
And we forget how truly every good and 
perfect gift comes from without, and 
from above, because no pause in her 
changeless beneficence teaches us the 
sad lessons of deprivation. 

Natural Law, p. 274. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 145 

July 2gth. 

It is not a strange thing for the soul to 
find its life in God. This is its native 
air. God as the Environment of the 
soul has been from the remotest age the 
doctrine of all the deepest thinkers in 
religion. How profoundly Hebrew po- 
etry is saturated with this high thought 
will appear when we try to conceive of 

it with this left out. 

Natural Law, p. 274. 

July 30th. 

The alternatives of the intellectual life 
are Christianity or Agnosticism. The 
Agnostic is right when he trumpets his 
incompleteness. He who is not com- 
plete in Him must be for ever incom- 
plete. 

Natural Laic, p. 278. 
10 



146 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS. 

July 31st. 
The problems of the heart and con- 
science are infinitely more perplexing 
than those of the intellect. Has love no 
future ? Has right no triumph ? Is the 
unfinished self to remain unfinished? 
The alternatives are two, Christianity 
or Pessimism. But when we ascend 
the further height of the religious na- 
ture, the crisis comes. There, without 
Environment, the darkness is unutter- 
able. So maddening now becomes the 
mystery that men are compelled to con- 
struct an Environment for themselves. 
No Environment here is unthinkable. An 
altar of some sort men must have — God, 
or Nature, or Law. But the anguish of 
Atheism is only a negative proof of man's 

incompleteness. 

Natural Law, p. 279. 



AUGUST. 



August ist. 

A photograph prints from the negative 
only while exposed to the sun. While 
the artist is looking to see how it is 
getting on he simply stops the getting 
on. Whatever of wise supervision the 
soul may need, it is certain it can never 
be over-exposed, or that, being exposed, 
anything else in the world can improve 
the result or quicken it. 

TJie Changed Life, pp. 56, 57. 



August 2d. 

What a very strange thing, is it not, 
for man to pray ? It is the symbol at 
once of his littleness and of his great- 



150 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

ness. Here the sense of imperfection, 
controlled and silenced in the narrower 
reaches of his being, becomes audible. 
Now he must utter himself. The sense 
of need is so real, and the sense of En- 
vironment, that he calls out to it, ad- 
dressing it articulately, and imploring 
it to satisfy his need. Surely there is 
nothing more touching in Nature than 
this ? Man could never so expose him- 
self, so break through all constraint, ex- 
cept from a dire necessity. 

Natural Late, p. 279. 

August 3d. 

What is Truth ? The natural Environ- 
ment answers, "Increase of Knowledge 
increaseth Sorrow," and " much study is 
a Weariness." Christ replies, "Learn of 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 151 

Me, and ye shall find Rest." Contrast 
the world's word " Weariness " with 
Christ's word " Rest." No other teacher 
since the world began has ever associ- 
ated "learn" with "Rest." Learn of 
me, says the philosopher, and you shall 
find Restlessness. Learn of Me, says 
Christ, and ye shall find Rest. 

Natural Law, p. 280. 

August 4th. 

Men will have to give up the experi- 
ment of attempting to live in half an En- 
vironment. Half an Environment will 
give but half a Life. . . . He whose 
correspondences are with this world alone 
has only a thousandth part, a fraction, the 
mere rim and shade of an Environment, 
and only the fraction of a Life. How 



152 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

long will it take Science to believe its 
own creed, that the material universe we 
see around us is only a fragment of the 
universe we do not see ? 

Natural Law, p. 282. 

August 5th. 
The Life of the senses, high and low, 
may perfect itself in Nature. Even the 
Life of thought may find a large comple- 
ment in surrounding things. But the 
higher thought, and the conscience, and 
the religious Life, can only perfect them- 
selves in God. 

Natural Law, p. 283. 

August 6th. 
To make the influence of Environment 
stop with the natural world is to doom 
the spiritual nature to death. For the 



FROM HENRY DRTJMMOND. 153 

soul, like the body, can never perfect 
itself in isolation. The law for both is 
to be complete in the appropriate En- 
vironment. 

Natural Law, p. 283. 

August yth. 

Take into your new sphere of labour, 
where you also mean to lay down your 
life, that simple charm, Love, and your 
life-work must succeed. You can take 
nothing greater, you need take nothing 
less. It is not worth while going if you 
take anything less. 

The Greatest Tiling in the World, p. 17. 

August 8th. 
Politeness has been defined as love in 
trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in 
little things. And the one secret of 



154 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

politeness is to love. Love cannot be- 
have itself unseemly. You can put the 
most untutored persons into the highest 
society, and if they have a reservoir of 
Love in their heart, they will not behave 
themselves unseemly. They simply can- 
not do it. 

The Greatest Thing in the Woiid, p. 26. 

August gth. 
I believe that Christ's yoke is easy. 
Christ's " yoke " is just His way of tak- 
ing life. And I believe it is an easier 
way than any other. I believe it is a 
happier way than any other. The most 
obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is 
that there is no happiness in having 
and getting anything, but only in giv- 
ing. 

Tlie Greatest Thing in the World, p. 29. 



FROM HENRY DRVMMOXD. 155 

August iotb. 
Half the world is on the wrong scent 
in the pursuit of happiness. They think 
it consists in having and getting, and in 
being served by others. It consists in 
giving, and in serving others. He that 
would be great among you, said Christ, 
let him serve. He that would be happy, 
let him remember that there is but one 
way — it is more blessed, it is more 
happy, to give than to receive. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 30. 

August nth. 

"Love is not easily provoked." . . . 
We are inclined to look upon bad temper 
as a very harmless weakness. We speak 
of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a fam- 
ily failing, a matter of temperament, not 



156 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

a thing to take into very serious account 
in estimating a man's character. And 
yet here, right in the heart of this analy- 
sis of love, it finds a place ; and the Bible 
again and again returns to condemn it as 
one of the most destructive elements in 
human nature. 

The Greatest Thing in the Wo?id y p. 30. 

August 1 2th. 

The peculiarity of ill-temper is that it 
is the vice of the virtuous. It is often 
the one blot on an otherwise noble char- 
acter. You know men who are all but 
perfect, and women who would be en- 
tirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, 
quick-tempered, or " touchy " disposi- 
tion. This compatibility of ill-temper 
with high moral character is one of 



FROM HENRY DRTTMMOND. 157 

the strangest and saddest problems of 

ethics. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 31. 

August 13th. 

"What makes a man a good artist, a 
good sculptor, a good musician ? Prac- 
tice. . . . What makes a man a good 
man ? Practice. Nothing else. There 
is nothing capricious about religion. We 
do not get the soul in different ways, un- 
der different laws, from those in which 
we get the body and the mind. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 40. 

August 14th. 

Love is not a thing of enthusiastic 
emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, 
vigorous expression of the whole round 



158 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Christian character — the Christ-like na- 
ture in its fullest development. And 
the constituents of this great character 
are only to be built up by ceaseless prac- 
tice. 

Tlie Greatest Tiling in the World, p. 41. 

August 15th. 
We know but little now about the con- 
ditions of the life that is to come. But 
what is certain is that Love must last. 
Grod, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet, 
therefore, that everlasting gift. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 54. 

August 1 6 th. 
To love abundantly is to live abund- 
antly, and to love forever is to live for- 
ever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 159 

bound up with love. . . . Love must 
be eternal. It is what God is. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, pp. 57, 58. 

August Ijth. 

When a man becomes a Christian the 
natural process is this : The Living 
Christ enters into his soul. Develop- 
ment begins. The quickening Life 
seizes upon the soul, assimilates sur- 
rounding elements, and begins to fashion 
it. According to the great Law of Con- 
formity to Type this fashioning takes a 
specific form. It is that of the Artist 
who fashions. And all through Life 
this wonderful, mystical, glorious, yet 
perfectly definite, process, goes on " un- 
til Christ be formed " in it. 

Natural Laio, p. 294. 



160 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

August 1 8th. 

The Christian Life is not a vague ef- 
fort after righteousness — an ill-defined, 
pointless struggle for an ill-defined, 
pointless end. Religion is no dishev- 
elled mass of aspiration, prayer, and 
faith. There is no more mystery in 
Religion as to its processes than in Bi- 
ology. 

Natural Law, p. 294. 

August igth. 

There is much mystery in Biology. 
We know all but nothing of Life yet, 
nothing of development. There is the 
same mystery in the spiritual Life. 
But the great lines are the same, as de- 
cided, as luminous ; and the laws of 
natural and spiritual are the same, as 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 161 

unerring, as simple. Will everything 
else in the natural world unfold its order, 
and yield to Science more and more a 
vision of harmony, and Religion, which 
should complement and perfect all, re- 
main a chaos ? 

Natural Laic, p. 294. 

August 20th. 

"When one attempts to sanctify him- 
self by effort, he is trying to make his 
boat go by pushing against the mast. 
He is like a drowning man trying to 
lift himself out of the water by pulling 
at the hair of his own head. Christ held 
up this method almost to ridicule when 
He said : " Which of you by taking 
thought can add a cubit to his stature ? " 
The one redeeming feature of the self- 
11 



162 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

sufficient method is this — that those who 

try it find out almost at once that it will 

not gain the goal. 

The Chnnged Life, p. 11. 

August 2 1 St. 

The Image of Christ that is forming 
within us — that is life's one charge. Let 
every project stand aside for that. " Till 
Christ be formed," no man V work is fin- 
ished, no religion crowned, no life has 

fulfilled its end. 

The Changed Life, p. 62. 

August 22d. 

Our companionship with Him, like all 
true companionship, is a spiritual com- 
munion. All friendship, all love, human 
and Divine, is purely spiritual. It was 



FROM HENRY DRUMMONB. 163 



after He was risen that He influenced 
even the disciples most. 

The Changed Life, p. 38. 

August 23d. 

Make Christ your most constant com- 
panion. Be more under His influence 
than under any other influence. Ten 
minutes spent in His society every day, 
ay, two minutes if it be face to face, 
and heart to heart, will make the whole 
day different. Every character has an 
inward spring, let Christ be it. Every 
action has a key-note, let Christ set it. 
The Changed Life, p. 40. 

August 24th. 

Under the right conditions it is as nat- 
ural for character to become beautiful as 



164 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

for a flower ; and if on God's earth there 
is not some machinery for effecting it, 
the supreme gift to the world has been 
forgotten. This is simply what man 
was made for. With Browning : " I say 
that Man was made to grow, not stop." 

The Changed Life, p. 10. 

August 25th. 
How can modern men to - day make 
Christ, the absent Christ, their most con- 
stant companion still ? The answer is 
that Friendship is a spiritual thing. It 
is independent of Matter, or Space, or 
Time. That which I love in my friend 
is not that which I see. What influences 
me in my friend is not his body but his 

spirit. 

The Changed Life, p. 37. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 165 

August 26th. 

Love should be the supreme thing — 
because it is going to last ; because in 
the nature of things it is an Eternal Life. 
It is a thing that we are living now, not 
that we get when we die ; that we shall 
have a poor chance of getting when we 
die unless we are living now. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 58. 

August 2jth. 

When will it be seen that the charac- 
teristic of the Christian Religion is its 
Life, that a true theology must begin 
with a Biology? Theology is the Sci- 
ence of God. Why will men treat God 

as inorganic ? 

Natural Law, p. 297. 



166 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

August 28th. 

We should be forsaking the lines of 
nature were we to imagine for a moment 
that the new creature was to be formed 
out of nothing. Nothing can be made 
out of nothing. Matter is uncreatable 
and indestructible ; Nature and man can 
only form and transform. Hence when 
a new animal is made, no new clay is 
made. Life merely enters into already 
existing matter, assimilates more of the 
same sort and rebuilds it. The spiritual 
Artist works in the same way. He must 
have a peculiar kind of protoplasm, a 
basis of life, and that must be already 

existing. 

Natural Law, p. 297. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 167 

August 2gth. 
However active the intellectual or 
moral life may be, from the point of 
view of this other Life it is dead. That 
which is flesh is flesh. It w r ants, that is 
to say, the kind of Life which constitutes 
the difference between the Christian and 
the not-a-Christian, It has not yet been 
" bom of the Spirit." 

Natural Late, p. 299. 

August 30th. 

The protoplasm in man has a some- 
thing in addition to its instincts or its 
habits. It has a capacity for God. In 
this capacity for God lies its receptivity ; 
it is the very protoplasm that w T as neces- 
sary. The chamber is not only ready to 
receive the new Life, but the Guest is 



168 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



expected, and, till He comes, is missed. 
Till then the soul longs and yearns, 
wastes and pines, waving its tentacles 
piteously in the empty air, feeling after 
God if so be that it may find Him. 
This is not peculiar to the protoplasm of 
the Christian's soul. In every land and 
in every age there have been altars to the 
Known or Unknown God. 

Natural Law, p. 300. 

August 31st. 

It is now agreed as a mere question of 
anthropology that the universal language 
of the human soul has always been " I 
perish with hunger." This is what fits 
it for Christ. There is a grandeur in 
this cry from the depths which makes 
its very unhappiness sublime. 

Natural Laic. p. 300. 



SEPTEMBER. 



September ist. 
In reflecting the character of Christ, 
it is no real obstacle that we may never 
have been in visible contact with Him- 
self. Many men know Dante better 
than their own fathers. He influences 
them more. As a spiritual presence he 
is more near to them, as a spiritual force 
more real. Is there any reason why a 
greater than . . . Dante should not 
also instruct, inspire, and mould the char- 
acters of men ? 

TJie Changed Life, pp. 38, 52. 

September 2d. 

Mark this distinction. . . . Imi- 
tation is mechanical, reflection organic. 



172 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

The one is occasional, the other habitual. 
In the ona case, man comes to God and 
imitates Him ; in the other, God comes 
to man and imprints Himself upon him. 
It is quite true that there is an imitation 
of Christ which amounts to reflection. 
But Paul's term includes all that the 
other holds, and is open to no mistake. 
" Whom having not seen, I love." 

The Changed Life, p. 39. 

September 3d. 

In paraphrase : We all reflecting as a 
mirror the character of Christ are trans- 
formed into the same Image from char- 
acter to character — from a poor charac- 
ter to a better one, from a better one 
to one a little better still, from that to 
one still more complete, until by slow 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 173 

degrees the Perfect Image is attained. 
Here the solution of the problem of 
sanctification is compressed into a sen- 
tence : Reflect the character of Christ 
and you will become like Christ. 

The Changed Life, p. 24. 

September 4th. 

Not more certain is it that it is some- 
thing outside the thermometer that pro- 
duces a change in the thermometer, than 
it is something outside the soul of man 
that produces a moral change upon him. 
That he must be susceptible to that 
change, that he must be a party to it, 
goes .without saying; but that neither 
his aptitude nor his will can produce it 

is equally certain. 

The Changed Life, p. 20. 



174 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September 5th. 

Just as in an organism we have these 
three things — formative matter, formed 
matter, and the forming principle or 
life ; so in the soul we have the old na- 
ture, the renewed nature, and the trans- 
forming Life. 

Natural Law, p. 302. 

September 6th. 

Is it hopeless to point out that one of 

the most recognizable characteristics of 

life is its unrecognizableness, and that 

the very token of its spiritual nature lies 

in its being beyond the grossness of our 

eyes? 

Natural Law, p. 302. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 175 



September 7th. 

According to the doctrine of Bio-gene- 
sis, life can only come from life. It was 
Christ's additional claim that His func- 
tion in the world was to give men Life. 
" I am come that ye might have Life, 
and that ye might have it more abund- 
antly." This could not refer to the 
natural life, for men had that already. 
He that hath the Son hath another Life. 
" Know ye not your own selves how that 
Jesus Christ is in you." 

Natural Law, p. 303. 



September 8th. 

The recognition of the Ideal is the 
first step in the direction of Conformity. 
But let it be clearly observed that it is 



176 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

but a step. There is no vital connection 
between merely seeing the Ideal and 
being conformed to it. Thousands ad- 
mire Christ who never become Chris- 
tians. 

Natural Law, p. 306. 



September gth. 

For centuries men have striven to find 
out ways and means to conform them- 
selves to the Christ Life. Impressive 
motives have been pictured, the proper 
circumstances arranged, the direction of 
effort defined, and men have toiled, 
struggled, and agonized to conform 
themselves to the Image of the Son. 
Can the protoplasm conform itself to its 
type? Can the embryo fashion itself? 
Is Conformity to Type produced by the 



FROM HENRY DEUMMOND. 177 



matter or by the life, by the protoplasm 
or by the Type? Is organization the 
cause of life or the effect of it ? It is 
the effect of it. Conformity to Type, 
therefore, is secured by the type. Christ 
makes the Christian. 

Natural Law, p. 307. 



September ioth. 

O preposterous and vain man, thou 
who couldest not make a finger-nail of 
thy body, thinkest thou to fashion this 
wonderful, mysterious, subtle soul of 
thine after the ineffable Image ? Wilt 
thou ever permit thyself to he conformed 
to the Image of the Son? Wilt thou, 
who canst not add a cubit to thy stature, 
submit to be raised by the Type - Life 



178 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

within thee to the perfect stature of 

Christ 

Natural Laic, p. 308. 

September nth. 

Men will still experiment " by works 
of righteousness which they have clone " 
to earn the Ideal life. The doctrine of 
Human Inability, as the Church calls it, 
has always been objectionable to men 
who do not know themselves. 

Natural Law, p. 309. 

September 12th. 

Let man choose Life ; let him daily 
nourish his soul ; let him forever starve 
the old life ; let him abide continuously 
as a living branch in the Vine, and the 
True-Vine Life will flow into his soul, 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 179 

assimilating, renewing, conforming to 
Type, till Christ, pledged by His own 
law, be formed in him. 

Natural Law, p. 312. 

September 1 3th. 

The work begun by Nature is finished 
by the Supernatural — as we are wont to 
call the higher natural. And as the veil 
is lifted by Christianity it strikes men 
dumb with wonder. For the goal of 
Evolution is Jesus Christ. 

Natural Law, p. 314. 

September 14th. 

The Christian life is the only life that 
will ever be completed. Apart from 
Christ the life of man is a broken pillar, 



ISO BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the race of men an unfinished pyramid 
One by one in sight of Eternity all 
human Ideals fall short, one by one be- 
fore the open grave all human hopes 

dissolve. 

Natural Laic, p. 314. 



September 15th. 

I do not think we ourselves are aware 
how much our religious life is made up 
of phrases ; how much of what we call 
Christian experience is only a dialect of 
the Churches, a mere religious phrase- 
ology with almost nothing behind it in 
what we really feel and know. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 12. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 181 

September 16th. 

The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centred 
life can be removed at once by learning 
Meekness and Lowliness of heart. He 
who learns them is forever proof against 
it. He lives henceforth a charmed life. 
Pax Vobiscum, p. 29. 

September iyth. 

Great trials come at lengthened inter- 
vals, and we rise to breast them ; but it 
is the petty friction of our every-day life 
with one another, the jar of business or 
of work, the discord of the domestic 
circle, the collapse of our ambition, the 
crossing of our will or the taking down 
of our conceit, which makes inward peace 

impossible. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 28. 



182 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September 18th. 

There are people who go about the 
world looking out for slights, and they 
are necessarily miserable, for they find 
them at every turn — especially the im- 
aginary ones. One has the same pity 
for such men as for the very poor. They 
are the morally illiterate. They have 
had no real education, for they have 
never learned how to live. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 31. 

September igth. 

Christ never said much in mere words 

about the Christian graces. He lived 

them, He was them. Yet we do not 

merely copy Him. We learn His art by 

living with Him. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 32. 



FROM HENRY DHUMMOND. 183 

September 20th. 

Christ's invitation to the weary and 
heavy-laden is a call to begin life over 
again upon a new principle — upon His 
own principle. " Watch My way of 
doing things," He says. " Follow Me. 
Take life as I take it. Be meek and 
lowly, and you will find Rest." 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 32. 

September 21st. 

If a man could make himself humble 
to order, it might simplify matters, but 
we do not find that this happens. Hence 
we must all go through the mill. Hence 
death, death to the lower self, is the 
nearest gate and the quickest road to life. 
Pax Vobiscum, p. 35. 



184 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September 22d. 

Whatever rest is provided by Christi- 
anity for the children of God, it is cer- 
tainly never contemplated that it should 
supersede personal effort. And any rest 
which ministers to indifference is im- 
moral and unreal — it makes parasites 

and not men. 

Natural Law, p. 335. 

September 23d. 

Just because God worketh in him, as 
the evidence and triumph of it, the true 
child of God works out his own salvation 
— works it out having really received it — 
not as a light thing, a superfluous labour, 
but with fear and trembling as a reason- 
able and indispensable service. 

Natural Lair, p. 335. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 185 

September 24th. 

Christianity, as Christ taught, is the 

truest philosophy of life ever spoken. 

But let us be quite sure when we speak 

of Christianity, that we mean Christ's 

Christianity. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 47. 

September 25th. 

So far from ministering to growth, 
parasitism ministers to decay. So far 
from ministering to holiness, that is to 
wholeness, parasitism ministers to exactly 
the opposite. One by one the spiritual 
faculties droop and die, one by one from 
lack of exercise the muscles of the soul 
grow weak and flaccid, one by one the 
moral activities cease. So from him 
that hath not, is taken away that which 



186 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

he hath, and after a few years of parasit- 
ism there is nothing left to save. 

Natural Laic, p. 336. 

September 26th. 

The natural life, not less than the 
eternal, is the gift of God. But life in 
either case is the beginning of growth 
and not the end of grace. To pause 
where we should begin, to retrograde 
where we should advance, to seek a me- 
chanical security that w^e may cover in- 
ertia and find a wholesale salvation in 
which there is no personal sanctification 

— this is Parasitism. 

Natural Law, p. 336. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 187 

September 27th. 

Could we investigate the spirit as a 
living organism, or study the soul of the 
backslider on principles of comparative 
anatomy, we should have a revelation of 
the organic effects of sin, even of the 
mere sin of carelessness as to growth and 
work, which must revolutionize our ideas 
of practical religion. There is no room 
for the doubt even that what goes on in 
the body does not with equal certainty 
take place in the spirit under the corre- 
sponding conditions. 

Natural Law, p. 345. 

September 28th. 
It is the beautiful w T ork of Christianity 
everywhere to adjust the burden of life 
to those who bear it, and them to it. It 



188 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

has a perfectly miraculous gift of heal- 
ing. Without doing any violence to 
human nature it sets it right with life, 
harmonizing it with all surrounding 
things, and restoring those who are 
jaded with the fatigue and dust of the 
world to a new grace of living. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 46. 

September 2gth. 

The penalty of backsliding is not 
something unreal and vague, some un- 
known quantity which may be measured 
out to us disproportionately, or which, 
perchance, since God is good, we may 
altogether evade. The consequences are 
already marked within the structure of 
the soul. So to speak, they are physio- 
logical. The thing effected by our in- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMONI). 189 



difference or by our indulgence is not 
the book of final judgment, but the pres- 
ent fabric of the soul. 

Natural Laic, p. 346. 

September 30th. 

The punishment of degeneration is 
simply degeneration — the loss of func- 
tions, the decay of organs, the atrophy of 
the spiritual nature. It is well known 
that the recovery of the backslider is 
one of the hardest problems in spiritual 
work. To reinvigorate an old organ 
seems more difficult and hopeless than 
to develop a new one; and the back- 
slider's terrible lot is to have to retrace 
with enfeebled feet each step of the way 
along which he strayed ; to make up inch 
1 >y inch the lee-way he has lost, carrying 



190 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS. 

with him a dead-weight of acquired re- 
luctance, and scarce knowing whether to 
be stimulated or discouraged by the op- 
pressive memory of the previous fall. 
Natural Laic, p. 346. 



OCTOBER. 



October ist. 

He who abandons the personal search 
for truth, under whatever pretext, aban- 
dons truth. The very word truth, by 
becoming the limited possession of a 
guild, ceases to have any meaning ; and 
faith, which can only be founded on 
truth, gives way to credulity, resting on 

mere opinion. 

Natural Law, p. 352. 



October 2d. 

It is more necessary for us to be active 
than to be orthodox. To be orthodox is 
what we wish to be, but we can only 
truly reach it by being honest, by being 



194 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

original, by seeing with our own eyes, 
by believing with our own heart. 

Natural Law* p. 364. 

October 3d. 
Better a little faith dearly won, better 
launched alone on the infinite bewilder- 
ment of Truth, than perish on the splen- 
did plenty of the richest creeds. Such 
Doubt is no self-willed presumption. 
Nor, truly exercised, will it prove itself, 
as much doubt does, the synonym for 

sorrow. 

Natural Law, p. 365. 

October 4th. 
Christianity removes the attraction of 
the earth ; and this is one way in which 
it diminishes men's burden. It makes 
them citizens of another world. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 47. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 195 

October 5th. 
Then the Christian experiences are 
our own making? In the same sense in 
which grapes are our own making, and 
no more. All fruits grow — whether they 
grow in the soil or in the soul ; whether 
they are the fruits of the wild grape or 
of the True Yine. No man can make 
things grow. He can get them to grow 
by arranging all the circumstances and 
fulfilling all the conditions. But the 
growing is done by God. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 56. 

October 6th 

Men may not know how fruits grow, 

but they do know that they cannot grow 

in five minutes. Some lives have not 

even a stalk on which fruits could hang, 



196 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

even if they did grow in five minutes. 
Some have never planted one sound seed 
of Joy in all their lives ; and others who 
may have planted a germ or two have 
lived so little in sunshine that they never 
could come to maturity. 

Pax VoMscum, p. 51. 

October Jth. 

There is no mystery about Happiness 

whatever. Put in the right ingredients 

and it must come out. He that abideth 

in Him will bring forth much fruit ; and 

bringing forth much fruit is Happiness. 

The infallible receipt for Happiness, 

then, is to do good ; and the infallible 

receipt for doing good is to abide in 

Christ. 

Pax VoMscum, p. 56. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 197 

October 8th. 
Spend the time you have spent in 
sighing for fruits in fulfilling the condi- 
tions of their growth. The fruits will 
come, must come. . . . About every 
other method of living the Christian life 
there is an uncertainty. About every 
other method of acquiring the Christian 
experiences there is a " perhaps." But 
in so far as this method is the way of 

nature, it cannot fail. 

Pax VoMscam, p. 58. 

October gth. 

The distinctions drawn between men 
are commonly based on the outward ap- 
pearance of goodness or badness, on the 
ground of moral beauty or moral deform- 
ity — is this classification scientific ? Or 



198 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

is there a deeper distinction between the 

Christian and the not - a - Christian as 

fundamental as that between the organic 

and the inorganic ? 

Natural Law, p. 374. 

October ioth. 

What is the essential difference be- 
tween the Christian and the not-a-Chris- 
tian, between the spiritual beauty and 
the moral beauty ? It is the distinction 
between the Organic and the Inorganic. 
Moral beauty is the product of the nat- 
ural man, spiritual beauty of the spirit- 
ual man. 

Natural Law, p. 380. 

October nth. 
The first Law of biology is : That 
which is Mineral is Mineral ; that which 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 199 

is Flesh is Flesh ; that which is Spirit is 
Spirit. The mineral remains in the in- 
organic world until it is seized upon by 
a something called Life outside the in- 
organic world ; the natural man remains 
the natural man, until a Spiritual Life 
from without the natural life seizes upon 
him, regenerates him, changes him into 

a spiritual man. 

Natural Law, p. 381. 

October 12th. 
Suppose now it be granted for a mo- 
ment that the character of the not-a- 
Christian is as beautiful as that of the 
Christian. This is simply to say that 
the crystal is as beautiful as the organ- 
ism. One is quite entitled to hold this ; 
but what he is not entitled to hold is 
that both in the same sense are living. 



200 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

" He that hath the Son hath Life, and he 
that hath not the Son of God hath not 

Life. 

Natural Law, p. 382. 

October 13th. 

Man is a moral animal, and can, and 

ought to, arrive at great natural beauty 

of character. But this is simply to obey 

the law of his nature — the. law of his 

flesh ; and no progress along that line 

can project him into the spiritual 

sphere. 

Natural Law, p. 382. 

October 14th. 
If any one choose to claim that the 
mineral beauty, the fleshly beauty, the 
natural moral beauty, is all he covets, he 



FROM HEFRY DRUMMOND. 201 

is entitled to his claim. To be good 
and true, pure and benevolent in the 
moral sphere, are high and, so far, legit- 
imate objects in life. If he deliberate- 
ly stop here, he is at liberty to do so. 
But what he is not entitled to do is to 
call himself a Christian, or to claim to 
discharge the functions peculiar to the 

Christian life. 

Natural Law, p. 382. 



October 15th. 

In dealing with a man of fine moral 
character, we are dealing with the high- 
est achievement of the organic kingdom. 
But in dealing with a spiritual man we 
are dealing with the lowest form of life 
in the spiritual ivorld. To contrast the 
two, therefore, and marvel that the one 



202 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

is apparently so little better than the 
other, is unscientific and unjust. 

Natural Law, p. 385. 

October 16th. 

The spiritual man is a mere unformed 
embryo, hidden as yet in his earthly 
chrysalis-case, while the natural man has 
the breeding and evolution of ages rep- 
resented in his character. But what 
are the possibilities of this spiritual 
organism ? What is yet to emerge from 
this chrysalis-case ? The natural char- 
acter finds its limits within the organic 
sphere. But who is to define the limits 
of the spiritual ? Even now it is very 
beautiful. Even as an embryo it con- 
tains some prophecy of its future glory. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 203 

But the point to mark is, that " it cloth 
not yet appear what it shall be." 

Natural Law, p. 386. 

October iyth. 

The best test for Life is just living. 
And living consists, as we have formerly 
seen, in corresponding with Environ- 
ment. Those therefore who find within 
themselves, and regularly exercise, the 
faculties for corresponding with the Di- 
vine Environment, may be said to live 

the Spiritual Life. 

Natural Law, p. 390. 

October i8th. 

That the Spiritual Life, even in the 
embryonic organism, ought already to 



204 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

betray itself to others, is certainly what 
one would expect. Every organism has 
its own reaction upon Nature, and the 
reaction of the spiritual organism upon 
the community must be looked for. In 
the absence of any such reaction, in the 
absence of any token that it lived for a 
higher purpose, or that its real interests 
were those of the Kingdom to which it 
professed to belong, we should be en- 
titled to question its being in that King- 
dom. 

Natural Law, p. 390. 



October igth. 

Man's place in Nature, or his position 
among the Kingdoms, is to be decided 
by the characteristic functions habitual- 
ly discharged by him. Now ? when the 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 205 

habits of certain individuals are closely 
observed, when the total effect of their 
life and work, with regard to the com- 
munity, is gauged, . . . there ought 
to be no difficulty in deciding whether 
they are living for the Organic or for the 
Spiritual; in plainer language, for the 

world or for God. 

Natural Law, p. 391. 

October 20th. 

No matter what may be the moral up- 
rightness of man's life, the honourable- 
ness of his career, or the orthodoxy of his 
creed, if he exercises the function of lov- 
ing the world, that defines his world — he 
belongs to the Organic Kingdom. He 
cannot in that case belong to the higher 
Kingdom. " If any man love the world, 
the love of the Father is not in him." 



206 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

After all, it is by the general bent of a 

man's life, by his heart-impulses and 

secret desires, his spontaneous actions 

and abiding motives, that his generation 

is declared. 

Natural Law, p. 393. 

October 21st. 

The imperious claim of a Kingdom 
upon its members is not peculiar to 
Christianity. It is the law in all depart- 
ments of Nature that every organism 
must live for its Kingdom. And in de- 
fining living for the higher Kingdom 
as the condition of living in it, Christ 
enunciates a principle which all Nature 
has prepared us to expect. 

Natural Law, p. 395. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 207 

October 22d. 

Christianity marks the advent of what 
is simply a new Kingdom. Its distinc- 
tions from the Kingdom below it are 
fundamental. It demands from its mem- 
bers activities and responses of an alto- 
gether novel order. It is, in the concep- 
tion of its Founder, a Kingdom for 
which all its adherents must henceforth 
exclusively live and work, and which 
opens its gates alone upon those who, 
having counted the cost, are prepared to 
follow it if need be to the death. The 
surrender Christ demanded was absolute. 
Every aspirant for membership must 
seek first the Kingdom of God. 

Natural Laic, p. 394. 



208 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October 23d. 

Until even religious men see the 
uniqueness of Christ's society, until they 
acknowledge to the full extent its claim 
to be nothing less than a new Kingdom, 
they will continue the hopeless attempt 
to live for two Kingdoms at once. And 
hence the value of a more explicit Classi- 
fication. For probably the most of the 
difficulties of trying to live the Christian 
life arise from attempting to half -live it. 
Natural Late, p. 396. 

October 24th. 

Two Kingdoms, at the present time, 
are known to Science — the Inorganic and 
the Organic. The spiritual life does not 
belong to the Inorganic Kingdom, be- 
cause it lives. It does not belong to the 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 209 

Organic Kingdom, because it is endowed 
with a kind of Life infinitely removed 
from either the vegetable or animal. 
Where, then, shall it be classed? We 
are left without an alternative. There 
being no Kingdom known to Science 
which can contain it, we must construct 
one. Or, rather, we must include in the 
programme of Science a Kingdom al- 
ready constructed, but the place of which 
in Science has not yet been recognized. 
That Kingdom is the Kingdom of God. 
Natural Law, p. 397. 

October 25th. 

The goal of the organisms of the Spirit- 
ual World is nothing less than this — to 
be " holy as He is holy, and pure as He 
is pure." And by the Law of Conformity 
14 



210 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

to Type, their final perfection is secured. 
The inward nature must develop out 
according to its Type, until the consum- 
mation of oneness with God is reached. 
Natural Law, p. 403. 

October 26th. 

Christianity defines the highest con- 
ceivable future for mankind. It satisfies 
the Law of Continuity. It guarantees 
the necessary conditions for carrying on 
the organism successfully, from stage to 
stage. It provides against the tendency 
to Degeneration. And finally, instead 
of limiting the yearning hope of final 
perfection to the organisms of a future 
age — an age so remote that the hope for 
thousands of years must still be hopeless 
— instead of inflicting this cruelty on in- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 211 

telligences mature enough to know per- 
fection and earnest enough to wish it, 
Christianity puts the prize within im- 
mediate reach of man. 

Natural Laic, p. 404. 

October 27th. 

No worse fate can befall a man in this 
world than to live and grow old alone, 
unloving and unloved. To be lost is to 
live in an unregenerate condition, love- 
less and unloved ; and to be saved is to 
love ; he that dwelleth in love dwelleth 
already in God. For God is Love. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 59. 

October 28th. 
"Love suffereth long, and is kind; 
love envieth not ; love vaunteth not it- 



212 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

self." Get these ingredients into your 
life. Then everything that you do is 
eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth 
giving time to. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 60. 

October 29th. 
The final test of religion at that great 
Day is not religiousness, but Love ; not 
what I have done, not what I have be- 
lieved, not what I have achieved,, but 
how I have discharged the common 
charities of life. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 62. 

October 30th. 
The words which all of us shall one 
Day hear sound not of theology but of 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 213 

life, not of churches and saints, but of 
the hungry and the poor, not of creeds 
and doctrines, but of shelter and cloth- 
ing, not of Bibles and prayer-books, but 
of cups of cold water in the name of 

Christ. 

The Greatest Thing in the Woiidj p. 63. 

October 31st 

The world moves. And each day, 
each hour, demands a further motion and 
re-adjustment for the soul. A telescope 
in an observatory follows a star by clock- 
work, but the clockwork of the soul is 
called the Will. Hence, while the soul 
in passivity reflects the Image of the 
Lord, the Will in intense activity holds 
the mirror in position lest the drifting 
motion of the world bear it beyond the 



214 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS. 

line of vision. To "follow Christ" is 
largely to keep tlie soul in such position 
as will allow for the motion of the earth. 
And this calculated counteracting of the 
movements of a world, this holding of 
the mirror exactly opposite to the Mir- 
rored, this steadying of the faculties un- 
erringly, through cloud and earthquake* 
fire and sword, is the stupendous co- 
operating labour of the Will. 

The Changed Life, p. 60. 



NOVEMBER. 



November ist. 

All around us Christians are wearing 
themselves out in trying to be better. 
The amount of spiritual longing in the 
world — in the hearts of unnumbered 
thousands of men and women in whom 
we should never suspect it; among the 
wise and thoughtful ; among the young 
and gay, who seldom assuage and never 
betray their thirst — this is one of the 
most wonderful and touching facts of 
life. It is not more heat that is need- 
ed, but more light ; not more force, but 
a wiser direction to be given to very real 
energies already there. 

Pax VoMscum, p. 14. 



218 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 2d, 

Men sigh for the wings of a dove, that 

they may fly away and be at Rest. But 

flying away will not help us. "The 

Kingdom of God is within you." "We 

aspire to the top to look for Rest ; it lies 

at the bottom. Water rests only when 

it gets to the lowest place. So do men. 

Hence, be lowly. 

Pax Vobiseum. p. 30. 



November 3d. 

The kingdom of God is righteous- 
ness, peace, joy. Righteousness, of 
course, is just doing what is right. Any 
boy who does what is right has the 
kingdom of God within him. Any boy 
who, instead of being quarrelsome, lives 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 219 

at peace with the other boys, has the 
kingdom of God within him. Any boy 
whose heart is filled with joy because 
he does what is right, has the king- 
dom of God within him. The kingdom 
of God is not going to religious meet- 
ings, and hearing strange religious expe- 
riences : the kingdom of God is doing 
what is right — living at peace with all 
men, being filled with joy in the Holy 

Ghost. 

First, p. 11. 

November 4th. 

The man who has no opinion of him- 
self at all can never be hurt if others do 
not acknowledge him. Hence, be meek. 
He who is without expectation cannot 
fret if nothing comes to him. It is self- 



220 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

evident that these things are so. The 

lowly man and the meek man are really 

above all other men, above all other 

things. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 30. 



November 5th. 

Keep religion in its place, and it will 
take you straight through life, and 
straight to your Father in heaven when 
life is over. But if you do not put it in 
its place, you may just as well have 
nothing to do with it. Religion out of 
its place in a human life is the most 
miserable thing in the world. There 
is nothing that requires so much to 
be kept in its place as religion, and 
its place is what ? second ? third ? 
" First." Boys, carry that home with 



FROM HEXRY DRtTMMOND. 221 

you to-day— -first the kingdom of God. 

Make it so that it will be natural to 

you to think about that the very first 

thing. 

First, pp. 15, 16. 

November 6th. 

The change we have been striving 

after is not to be produced by any more 

striving after. It is to be wrought upon 

us by the moulding of hands beyond our 

own. As the branch ascends, and the 

bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under 

the co-operation of influences from the 

outside air, so man rises to the higher 

stature under invisible pressures from 

without. 

The Changed Life, p. 21. 



222 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November Jth. 

Every man's character remains as it is, 
or continues in the direction in which it 
is going, until it is compelled by im- 
pressed forces to change that state. 
Our failure has been the failure to put 
ourselves in the way of the impressed 
forces. There is a clay, and there is a 
Potter ; we have tried to get the clay to 
mould the clay. 

The Changed Life, p. 21. 



November 8th. 

Character is a unity, and all the vir- 
tues must advance together to make the 
perfect man. This method of sanctifica- 
tion, nevertheless, is in the true direc- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 223 

tion. It is only in the details of execu- 
tion that it fails. 

The Changed Life, p. 14. 



November gth. 

We all reflecting as a mirror the char- 
acter of Christ are transformed into the 
same Image from character to character 
— from a poor character to a better one, 
from a better one to one a little better 
still, from that to one still more com- 
plete, until by slow degrees the Perfect 
Image is attained. Here the solution of 
the problem of sanctification is com- 
pressed into a sentence : Reflect the 
character of Christ, and you will become 

like Christ. 

The Changed Life, p. 24. 



224 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November ioth. 

There are some men and some women 
in whose company we are always at our 
best. While with them we cannot think 
mean thoughts or speak ungenerous 
words. Their mere presence is eleva- 
tion, purification, sanctity. All the best 
stops in our nature are drawn out by 
their intercourse, and we find a music in 
our souls that was never there before. 
The Changed Life, p. 33. 

November nth. 

Take such a sentence as this : African 
explorers are subject to fevers which 
cause restlessness and delirium. Note 
the expression, " cause restlessness." 
Restlessness has a cause. Clearly, then, 
any one who wished to get rid of rest- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 225 

lessness would proceed at once to deal 
with the cause. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 20. 

November 12th. 
"What Christian experience wants is 
thread, a vertebral column, method. It 
is impossible to believe that there is no 
remedy for its unevenness and dishevel- 
ment, or that the remedy is a secret. 
The idea, also, that some few men, by 
happy chance or happier temperament, 
have been given the secret — as if there 
were some sort of knack or trick of it — 
is wholly incredible. Religion must 
ripen fruit for every temperament ; and 
the way even into its highest heights 
must be by a gateway through which the 
peoples of the world may pass. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 15. 



226 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 13th. 

Nothing that happens in the world 

happens by chance. God is a God of 

order. Everything is arranged upon 

definite principles, and never at random. 

The world, even the religious world, is 

governed by law. Character is governed 

by law. Happiness is governed by law. 

The Christian experiences are governed 

by law. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 17. 



November 14th. 

We are changed, as the Old Version 
has it- — we do not change ourselves. No 
man can change himself. Throughout 
the New Testament you will find that 
wherever these moral and spiritual trans- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 227 

formations are described the verbs are in 
the passive. Presently it will be point- 
ed out that there is a rationale in this ; 
but meantime do not toss these words 
aside as if this passivity denied all hu- 
man effort or ignored intelligible law. 
What is implied for the soul here is no 
more than is everywhere claimed for the 

body. 

The Changed Life, p. 19. 



November 15 th. 

Rain and snow do drop from the air, 
but not without a long previous histo- 
ry. They are the mature effects of for 
mer causes. Equally so are Rest, and 
Peace, and Joy. They, too, have each 
a previous history. Storms and winds 
and calms are not accidents, but are 



228 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

brought about by antecedent circum- 
stances. Rest and Peace are but calms in 
man's inward nature, and arise through 
causes as definite and as inevitable. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 18. 

November 16th. 

Few men know how to live. We grow 
up at random, carrying into mature life 
the merely animal methods and motives 
which we had as little children. And it 
does not occur to us that all this must be 
changed ; that much of it must be re- 
versed ; that life is the finest of the Fine 
Arts ; that it has to be learned with life- 
long patience, and that the years of our 
pilgrimage are all too short to master it 

triumphantly. 

Pax Vobiscmn, p. 31. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 229 

November 17th. 

Christ's life outwardly was one of the 

most troubled lives that was ever lived : 

Tempest and tumult, tumult and tempest, 

the waves breaking over it all the time 

till the worn body was laid in the grave. 

But the inner life was a sea of glass. 

The great calm was always there. At 

any moment you might have gone to 

Him and found Eest. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 35. 

November 18th. 
The creation of a new heart, the re- 
newing of a right spirit is an omnipotent 
work of God. Leave it to the Creator. 
" He which hath begun a good work in 
you will perfect it unto that day." 

The Changed Life v p. 57. 



230 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 19th. 

To become like Christ is the only 
thing in the world worth caring for, the 
thing before which every ambition of 
man is folly, and all lower achievement 
vain. Those only who mate this quest 
the supreme desire and passion of their 
lives can even begin to hope to reach it. 
TJie Changed Life, p. 57. 

November 20th. 
A religion of effortless adoration may 
be a religion for an angel but never for 
a man. Not in the contemplative, but in 
the active, lies true hope ; not in rapt- 
ure, but in reality, lies true life ; not in 
the realm of ideals, but among tangible 
things, is man's sanctification wrought. 
The Changed Life, p. 58. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMONB. 231 

November 21st. 

Nothing ever for a moment broke the 
serenity of Christ's life on earth. Mis- 
fortune could not reach Him ; He had 
no fortune. Food, raiment, money — 
fountain-heads of half the world's weari- 
ness — He simply did not care for ; they 
played no part in His life ; He " took 
no thought " for them. It was impossi- 
ble to affect Him by lowering His repu- 
tation ; He had already made Himself of 
no reputation. He was dumb before in- 
sult. When He was reviled, He reviled 
not again. In fact, there was nothing 
that the world could do to Him that 
could ruffle the surface of His spirit. 

Pax VoMscum, p. 36. 



232 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 22d. 

Life is the cradle of eternity. As the 
man is to the animal in the slowness of 
his evolution, so is the spiritual man to 
the natural man. Foundations which 
have to bear the weight of an eternal life 
must be surely laid. Character is to 
wear forever ; who will wonder or grudge 
that it cannot be developed in a day ? 
The Changed Life, p. 55. 

November 23d. 
To await the growing of a soul is an 
almost Divine act of faith. How par- 
donable, surely, the impatience of de- 
formity with itself, of a consciously des- 
picable character standing before Christ, 
wondering, yearning, hungering to be 
like that ? Yet must one trust the pro- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 233 

cess fearlessly, and without misgiving. 
" The Lord the Spirit " will do His part. 
The tempting expedient is, in haste for 
abrupt or visible progress, to try some 
method less spiritual, or to defeat the 
end by watching for effects instead of 
keeping the eye on the Cause. 

The Changed Life, p. 56. 



November 24th. 

The Image of Christ that is forming 
within us — that is life's one charge. Let 
every project stand aside for that. " Till 
Christ be formed," no man's work is fin- 
ished, no religion crowned, no life has 
fulfilled its end. Is the infinite task 
begun? "When, how, are we to be 
different? Time cannot change men. 



234 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Death cannot change men. Christ can. 
Wherefore put on Christ 

The Changed Life, p. 62. 



November 25th. 

Christ saw that men took life pain- 
fully. To some it was a weariness, to 
others a failure, to many a tragedy, to all 
a struggle and a pain. How to carry 
this burden of life had been the whole 
world's problem. It is still the whole 
world's problem. And here is Christ's 
solution. " Carry it as I do. Take 
life as I take it. Look at it from My 
point of view. Interpret it upon My 
principles. Take My yoke and learn 
of Me, and you will find it easy. For 
My yoke is easy, works easily, sits right 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOJSfD. 235 

upon the shoulders, and therefore My 

burden is light. 

Pax VoUscum, p. 44. 

November 26th. 
There is a disease called " touchiness " 
— a disease which, in spite of its inno- 
cent name, is one of the grayest sources 
of restlessness in the world. Touchi- 
ness, when it becomes chronic, is a mor- 
bid condition of the inward disposition. 
It is self-love inflamed to the acute point. 
. . . The cure is to shift the yoke to 
some other place ; to let men and things 
touch us through some new and perhaps 
as yet unused part of our nature ; to be- 
come meek and lowly in heart while the 
old nature is becoming numb from want 

of use. 

Pax Vobiscum, pp. 45, 46. 



236 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 2jth. 
Christ's yoke is simply His secret 
for the alleviation of human life, His 
prescription for the best and happiest 
method of living. Men harness them- 
selves to the work and stress of the 
world in clumsy and unnatural ways. 
The harness they put on is antiquated. 
A rough, ill-fitted collar at the best, they 
make its strain and friction past endur- 
ing, by placing it where the neck is most 
sensitive ; and by mere continuous irri- 
tation this sensitiveness increases until 
the whole nature is quick and sore. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 45. 

November 28th. 
No one can get Joy by merely ask- 
ing for it. It is one of the ripest fruits 



FROM HEXRY DRTJMMOND. 237 

of the Christian life, and, like all fruits, 

must be grown. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 50. 

November 2gth. 
Christ is the source of Joy to men in 
the sense in which He is the source of 
Rest. His people share His life, and 
therefore share its consequences, and 
one of these is Joy. His method of 
living is one that in the nature of things 
produces Joy. When He spoke of His 
Joy remaining with us He meant in part 
that the causes which produced it should 
continue to act. His followers, that is to 
say, by repeating His life w r ould expe- 
rience its accompaniments. His Joy, 
His kind of Joy, would remain with 

them. 

Pax Vobiscum, p. 54. 



238 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS. 

November 30th. 

Think of it, the past is not only f o- 
cussed there, in a man's soul, it is 
there. How could it be reflected from 
there if it were not there ? All things 
that he has ever seen, known, felt, be- 
lieved of the surrounding world are now 
within him, have become part of him, in 
part are him — he has been changed into 
their image. He may deny it, he may 
resent it, but they are there. They do 
not adhere to him, they are transfused 
through him. He cannot alter or rub 
them out. They are not in his memory, 
they are in him. His soul is as they 
have filled it, made it, left it. 

The Changed Life, p. 27. 



DECEMBER. 



December ist. 

Temper is significant, not in what it 
is alone but in what it reveals. ... It 
is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation 
of an unloving nature at bottom. It is 
the intermittent fever which bespeaks 
unintermittent disease within ; the occa- 
sional bubble escaping to the surface 
which betrays some rottenness under- 
neath; a sample of the most hidden 
products of the soul dropped involun- 
tarily when off one's guard ; in a word, 
the lightning form of a hundred hideous 
and un-Christian sins. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 34. 



242 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 2d. 

You will find, as you look back upon 
your life, that the moments that stand 
out, the moments when you have really 
lived, are the moments when you have 
done things in a spirit of love. As mem- 
ory scans the past, above and beyond all 
the transitory pleasures of life there leap 
forward those supreme hours when you 
have been enabled to do unnoticed kind- 
nesses to those round about you, things 
too trifling to speak about, but which you 
feel have entered into your eternal life. 
The Greatest Thing in the World, p, 60. 

December 3d. 
If events change men, much more per- 
sons. No man can meet another on the 
street without making some mark upon 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 243 

him. We say we exchange words when 
we meet ; what we exchange is souls. 
And when intercourse is very close and 
very frequent, so complete is this ex- 
change that recognizable bits of the one 
soul begin to show in the other's nature, 
and the second is conscious of a similar 
and growing debt to the first. 

The Changed Life, p. 30. 

December 4th. 

In the natural world we absorb heat, 
breathe air, draw on Environment all 
but automatically for meat and drink, 
for the nourishment of the senses, for 
mental stimulus, for all that; penetrating 
us from without, can prolong, enrich, 
and elevate life. But in the spiritual 
world we have all this to learn. We are 



244 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

new creatures, and even the bare living 
lias to be acquired. 

Natural Laic, p. 267. 

December 5th. 

The great point in learning to live the 
spiritual life is to live naturally. As 
closely as possible we must follow the 
broad, clear lines of the natural life. 
And there are three things especially 
which it is necessary for us to keep con- 
tinually in view. The first is that the 
organism contains within itself only one- 
half of what is essential to life ; the 
second is that the other half is contained 
in the Environment ; the third, that the 
condition of receptivity is simple union 
between the organism and the Environ- 
ment. 

Natural Laic, p. 268. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 245 

December 6th. 
To say that the organism contains 
within itself only one-half of what is 
essential to life, is to repeat the evan- 
gelical confession, so worn and yet so 
true to universal experience, of the utter 

helplessness of man. 

Natural Law, p. 268. 

December yth. 
Who has not come to the conclusion 
that he is but a part, a fraction of some 
larger whole ? Who does not miss at 
every turn of his life an absent God? 
That man is but a part, he knows, for 
there is room in him for more. That 
God is the other part, he feels, because 
at times He satisfies his need. Who 
does not tremble often under that sick- 
lier symptom of his incompleteness, his 



246 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

want of spiritual energy, his helplessness 
with sin? But now he understands 
both — the void in his life, the power- 
lessness of his will. He understands 
that, like all other energy, spiritual 
power is contained in Environment. 
He finds here at last the true root of all 
human frailty, emptiness, nothingness, 
sin. This is why " without Me ye can 
do nothing." Powerless is the normal 
state not only of this but of every organ- 
ism — of every organism apart from its 

Environment. 

Natural Law, p. 268. 

December 8th. 

To seize continuously the opportunity 
of more and more perfect adjustment to 
better and higher conditions, to balance 



FROM HENRY DMUMMOND. 247 

some inward evil with some purer influ- 
ence acting from without, in a word to 
make our Environment at the same time 
that it is making us — these are the 
secrets of a well-ordered and successful 

life. 

Natural Laic, p. 256. 

December gth. 

In the spiritual world the subtle in- 
fluences which form and transform the 
soul are Heredity and Environment. 
And here especially, where all is invisi- 
ble, where much that we feel to be real 
is yet so ill-defined, it becomes of vital 
practical moment to clarify the atmos- 
phere as far as possible with conceptions 
borrowed from the natural life. 

Natural Laio, p. 256. 



248 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December ioth. 

These lower correspondences are in 
their nature unfitted for an Eternal Life. 
Even if they were perfect in their rela- 
tion to their Environment, they would 
still not be Eternal. However opposed, 
apparently, to the scientific definition 
of Eternal Life, it is yet true that per- 
fect correspondence with Environment 
is not Eternal Life. . . . An Eter- 
nal Life demands an Eternal Environ- 
ment. 

Natural Law, p. 245. 



December nth. 

On what does the Christian argument 
for Immortality really rest ? It stands 
upon the pedestal on which the theo- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 249 

logian rests the whole of historical 
Christianity — the Resurrection of Jesus 

Christ. 

Natural Law, p. 234. 

December 12th. 

m 

The soul which has no correspondence 
with the spiritual environment is spirit- 
ually dead. It may be that it never 
possessed . . . the spiritual ear, or 
a heart which throbbed in response to 
the love of God. If so, having never 
lived, it cannot be said to have died. 
But not to have these correspondences 
is to be in the state of Death. To the 
spiritual world, to the Divine Environ- 
ment, it is dead — as a stone which has 
never lived is dead to the environment 
of the organic world. 

Natural Law, p. 177. 



250 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 13th. 

The humanity of what is called " sud- 
den conversion " has never been insisted 
on as it deserves. . . . "While growth 
is a slow and gradual process, the change 
from* Death to Life, alike in the natural 
and spiritual spheres, is the work of the 
moment. Whatever the conscious hour 
of the second birth may be — in the case 
of an adult it is probably defined by the 
first real victory over sin — it is certain 
that on biological principles the real 
turning-point is literally a moment. 

Natural Law, p. 184. 

December 14th. 

Christ says we must hate life. Now, 
this does not apply to all life. It is 
" life in this world " that is to be hated. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOXD. 25 L 

For life in this world implies conformity 
to this world. It may not mean pursu- 
ing worldly pleasures, or mixing with 
worldly sets ; but a subtler thing than 
that — a silent deference to worldly opin- 
ion; an almost unconscious lowering of 
religious tone to the level of the worldly- 
religious world around; a subdued re- 
sistance to the soul's delicate promptings 
to greater consecration, out of deference 
to " breadth " or fear of ridicule. These, 
and such things, are what Christ tells us 
we must hate. For these things are of 
the very essence of worldliness. " If 
any man love the world," even in this 
sense, "the love of the Father is not in 

him." 

Natural Laic, p. 197. 



252 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 15th. 

To correspond with the God of Sci- 
ence, the Eternal Unknowable, would be 
everlasting existence ; to correspond with 
"the true God and Jesus Christ," is 
Eternal Life. The quality of the Eternal 
Life alone makes the heaven ; mere ever- 
lastingness might be no boon. Even the 
brief span of the temporal life is too long 
for those who spend its years in sorrow. 
Natural Laic, p. 220. 

December 16th. 

The relation between the spiritual 
man and his Environment is, in theolo- 
gical language, a filial relation. With 
the new Spirit, the filial correspondence, 
he knows the Father — and this is Life 
Eternal. This is not only the real re- 



FROM HENRY BRUMMOND. 253 

lation, but the only possible relation : 
"Neither knoweth any man the Father 
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the 
Son will reveal Him." And this on 
purely natural grounds. 

Natural Law, p. 229. 

December iyth. 

Communion with God — can it be de- 
monstrated in terms of Science that this 
is a correspondence which will never 
break? We do not appeal to Science 
for such a testimony. We have asked 
for its conception of an Eternal Life ; 
and we have received for answer that 
Eternal Life would consist in a corre- 
spondence which should never cease, with 
an Environment which should never pass 
away. And yet what w r ould Science de- 



254: BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

mand of a perfect correspondence that 
is not met by this, the knowing of God ? 
There is no other correspondence which 
could satisfy one at least of the condi- 
tions. Not one could be named which 
would not bear on the face of it the mark 
and pledge of its mortality. But this, 
to know God, stands alone. 

Natural Law, p. 220. 

December 18th. 

The misgiving which will creep some- 
times over the brightest faith has already 
received its expression and its rebuke : 
"Who shall separate us from the love of 
Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, 
or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, 
or peril, or sword ? " Shall these 
" changes in the physical state of the 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 255 

environment " which threaten death to 
the natural man, destroy the spiritual? 
Shall death, or life, or angels, or princi- 
palities, or powers, arrest or tamper with 
his eternal correspondences? "Nay, in 
all these things we are more than con- 
querors through Him that loved us. 
For I am persuaded that neither death, 
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 
nor powers, nor things present, nor 
things to come, nor height, nor depth, 
nor any other creature, shall be able to 
separate us from the love of God, which 
is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Bom. viii. 

35-39. 

Natural Law, p. 230. 

December igth. 
"We find that man, or the spiritual man, 
is equipped with two sets of correspond- 



256 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

ences. One set possesses the quality 
of everlastingness, the other is temporal. 
But unless these are separated by some 
means the temporal will continue to im- 
pair and hinder the eternal. The final 
preparation, therefore, for the inheriting 
of Eternal Life must consist in the 
abandonment of the non-eternal ele- 
ments. These must be unloosed and 
dissociated from the higher elements. 
And this is effected by a closing catas- 
trophe — Death. 

Natural Law, p. 248. 



December 20th. 

Heredity and Environment are the 
master-influences of the organic world. 
These have made all of us what we are. 
These forces are still ceaselessly playing 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 257 

upon all our lives. And he who truly 
understands these influences ; he who 
has decided how much to allow to each ; 
he who can regulate new forces as they 
arise, or adjust them to the old, so di- 
recting them as at one moment to make 
them co-operate, at another to counter- 
act one another, understands the ration- 
ale of personal development. 

Natural aw, p. Z255. 

December 21st. 

It is the Law of Influence that toe be- 
come like those whom ice habitually admire. 
. . . Through all the range of litera- 
ture, of history, and biography this law 
presides. Men are all mosaics of other 
men. There was a savour of David about 
Jonathan and a savour of Jonathan about 



258 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

David. Jean Valjean, in the masterpiece 
of Victor Hugo, is Bishop Bienvenu 
risen from the dead. Metempsychosis is 

a fact. 

The Changed Life, p. 31. 

December 22d. 

Can we shut our eyes to the fact that 
the religious opinions of mankind are in 
a state of flux ? And when we regard 
the uncertainty of current beliefs, the 
war of creeds, the havoc of inevitable as 
well as of idle doubt, the reluctant aban- 
donment of early faith by those who 
would cherish it longer if they could, is 
it not plain that the one thing thinking 
men are waiting for is the introduction 
of Law among the Phenomena of the 
Spiritual "World ? When that comes we 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 259 

shall offer to such men a truly scientific 

theology. And the Reign of Law will 

transform the whole Spiritual "World as 

it has already transformed the Natural 

World. 

Natural Laic, Preface, p. ix. 

December 23d. 
We have Truth in Nature as it came 
from God. And it has to be read with 
the same unbiassed mind, the same open 
eye, the same faith, and the same rever- 
ence as all other Revelation. All that is 
found there, whatever its place in The- 
ology, whatever its orthodoxy or hetero- 
doxy, whatever its narrowness or its 
breadth, we are bound to accept as Doc- 
trine from which on the lines of Science 

there is no escape. 

Natural Laio, Preface, p. xL 



260 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 24th. 

In Nature generally, we come upon 
new Laws as we pass from lower to 
liiglier kingdoms, the old still remaining 
in force, the newer Law T s which one 
would expect to meet in the Spiritual 
World would so transcend and over- 
whelm the older as to make the analogy 
or identity, even if traced, of no practi- 
cal use. The new Laws would represent 
operations and energies so different, and 
so much more elevated, that they would 
afford the true keys to the Spiritual 

World. 

Natural Law, p. 47. 

December 25th. 

The visible is the ladder up to the in- 
visible; the temporal is but the scaffold- 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 261 

ing of the eternal. And when the last 
immaterial souls have climbed through 
this material to God, the scaffolding 
shall be taken down, and the earth dis- 
solved with fervent heat — not because it 
was base, but because its work is done. 
Natural Law, p. 57. 



December 26th. 

The natural man belongs essentially 
to this present order of things. He is 
endowed simply with a high quality of 
the natural animal Life. But it is Life 
of so poor a quality that it is not Life at 
all. He that hath not the Son hath not- 
Life ; but he that hath the Son hath 
Life — a new and distinct and super- 
natural endowment. He is not of this 



262 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

world. He is of the timeless state, of 

Eternity. It doth not yet appear what he 

shall be. 

Natural Law, p. 82. 

December 2jth. 

The gradnalness of growth is a char- 
acteristic which strikes the simplest ob- 
server. Long before the word Evolu- 
tion was coined Christ applied it in this 
very connection — " First the blade, then 
the ear, then the full corn in the ear." 
It is well known also to those who study 
the parables of Nature that there is an 
ascending scale of slowness as we rise in 
the scale of Life. Growth is most grad- 
ual in the highest forms. Man attains 
his maturity after a score of years ; the 
monad completes its humble cycle in a 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 263 

day. What wonder if development be 

tardy in tlie Creature of Eternity ? A 

Christian's sun has sometimes set, and a 

critical world has seen as yet no corn in 

the ear. As yet? "As yet," in this 

long Life, has not begun. Grant him 

the years proportionate to his place in 

the scale of Life. "The time of harvest 

is not yet" 

Natural Law, p. 92. 

December 28th. 

Salvation is a definite process. If a 
man refuse to submit himself to that 
process, clearly he cannot have the bene- 
fits of it. " As many as received Him 
to them gave He power to become the 
sons of God." He does not avail him- 
self of this power. It may be mere care- 



264 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

lessness or apathy. Nevertheless the 
neglect is fatal. He cannot escape be- 
cause he will not. 

Natural Law, p. 109. 



December 2gth. 

The end of Salvation is perfection, 
the Christ-like mind, character, and life. 
Morality is on the way to this perfec- 
tion ; it may go a considerable distance 
toward it, but it can never reach it. 
Only Life can do that. . . . Morality 
can never reach perfection; Life must. 
For the Life nmst develop out accord- 
ing to its type ; and being a germ of 
the Christ-life, it must unfold into a 
Christ. 

Natural Law, p. 128. 



FROM HENRY DRUMMOND. 265 

December 30th. 
Perfect life is not merely the possess- 
ing of perfect functions, but of perfect 
functions perfectly adjusted to each 
other, and all conspiring to a single re- 
sult, the perfect working of the whole 
organism. It is not said. that the char- 
acter will develop in all its fulness in 
this life. That were a time too short for 
an Evolution so magnificent. In this 
world only the cornless ear is seen ; 
sometimes only the small yet still pro- 
phetic blade. 

Natural Law, p. 129. 

December 31st. 

The immortal soul must give itself to 
something that is immortal. And the 
only immortal things are these : " Now 



266 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest 
of these is love." 

Some think the time may come when 
two of these three things will also pass 
away — faith into sight, hope into fruition. 
Paul does not say so. We know but 
little now about the conditions of the 
life that is to come. But what is certain 
is that Love must last. God, the Eternal 
God, is Love. Covet therefore that 
everlasting gift. 

TJie Greatest Thing in the World, pp. 54, 55. 



INDEX. 



INDEX 



Abiding in the Vine, 178. 
Abundant love, 51. 
Agnostic, 57, 58. 
Agnosticism, 145. 
Alchemy of influence, 257. 
Anxious thought, 49. 
Atheists, 34. 

Backsliding, 188. 
Bad-temper, 155. 
Balance, 29. 
Being still, 45. 
Belief, 18. 

in God, 60. 
Besetting sin, 80. 
Bio-genesis, 20. 
Born of the Spirit, 167. 

Capacity for Heaven, 34. 
Ceaseless practice, 157. 



270 INDEX, 



Chance, 226. 

Change comes not of ourselves, 226. 

Character, 22. 

a unity, 222. 
Charity, 11, 17. 
Child-spirit, 141. 
Christ formed in us, 159, 162, 172. 

our companion, 163, 164. 

the source of Joy, 237. 
Christ-life, 48. 
Christ's inner life, 229. 

serenity, 231. 

yoke, 154, 236. 
Christian character, 199. 

graces, how acquired, 182. 

life not vague, 160. 
Christianity heals, 187. 

the philosophy of life, 185. 
Communion with God, 54, 253. 
Completed life, 179. 
Concentration, 89. 
Conditions of growth, 45, 46, 

of the spiritual life, 125, 126. 
Conformity to the Ideal, 175. 

to Type, 176, 177, 209. 
Correspondences, 52. 



INDEX. 271 



Courtesy, 153. 

Crucifixion of the flesh, 78. 



Darkness, 62. 

Dead, 57, 

Death, 58, 120, 123, 124. 

the road to Life, 183. 
Deeds of love, 93. 
Degeneration, 28, 30, 31, 32, 189. 
Dependence upon God, 139. 
Development dependent, 65, 66. 
Difficulty of grasping truth, 26. 
Distinctions between men, 197. 
Doubt, the synonym for sorrow, 194. 
Dwarfing a soul, 68. 

Earthly Mind, 54. 

Earth's attraction, 194. 

Elements in organism, three, 174. 

Eloquence, 44. 

Energies, 47. 

Environment, 113, 115, 116, 140. 

a cause, 67. 
Envy, 59. 
Escape from evil, 35. 



272 INDEX. 



Eternal Life, 100-103, 105, 106, 110, 112, 119, 

248. 
Evading self-denial, 90. 
Evil temper, 69. 
Evolution, 30. 
Exchange of souls, 242. 
Exercise necessary, 25. 

Failukes, 41. 

Filial relation, 252. 

Final tests of Religion, 212. 

Fitness for eternal life, 252. 

Fractional life, 137, 151. 

Friction of every- day life, 181. 

Friendship, 138. 

From above, 18. 

Fruit -bearing, 141. 

Fuller and richer life, 100. 

Giving, 69. 

Goal of Evolution, 179. 
God in Nature, 61. 
Good company, 224. 
Great growth unseen, 143. 
Growth, 42, 46, 110. 
gradual, 262. 



INDEX. 273 



Growth in grace, 117. 
of fruit, 195, 197. 
Guilelessness, 72. 

Habitual sin, 79. 
Happiness, 43. 

how to secure, 196. 
Hating life, 250. 
Heart-disease, 82. 
Helplessness of man, 244. 
Heredity and Environment, 127-131, 247, 256. 
Higher Life, The, 152. 
Human Inability, 178. 
Hunger of soul, 168. 

Ill-temper, 241. 

Ill-tempered person, 84, 85. 
Imitation and Eeflection, 171. 
Immortality, 248. 
Imperfection abolished, 123. 
Imperfections, 48. 
Impressed forces, 222. 
Incarnation, 114. 
Influence, 65. 

for good, 19. 
Inheritance of Eternal Life, 255. 
18 



274 INDEX. 



Intellect, 9. 
Isolation, 81. 

Joy must be grown, 236. 

Kindness, 50, 69. 
Kingdom of God first, 220. 

of God within, 218. 
Knowledge, 13. 

Laddek and scaffolding, 260. 

Law, 13. 

Life, the cradle of eternity, 232. 

Dependence of, 16. 

one of the Fine Arts, 228. 

only from Life, 175. 
Life-science, 113. 
Likeness to Christ, 230. 
Lilies, 41. 
Limitation, 87. 
Live for the Kingdom, 206. 

naturally, 244. 
Living Spirit, 21. 
Love, 11, 16, 19, 27, 38, 50, 62. 

alone endures, 158. 

eternal, 158, 265. 



INDEX. 275 



Love in life-work, 153. 

of Christ, 82. 

of self, 64. 

of the world, 205. 

the supreme thing, 165. 
Love's ingredients, 211. 
Lowliness brings Eest, 218. 

Man, a moral animal, 200. 

made to grow, 163. 

made for Eternity, 261. 
Man's place in Nature, 204. 

sense of need, 149. 

soul, and its parts, 238. 
Meekness and Lowliness, 181, 219. 
Method, 225. 
Misunderstanding, 14. 
Moral and not Christian, 200. 

and spiritual, 201. 

change, how produced, 173. 
Mortification, 76, 86, 91, 94. 
Mystery, 12, 20, 25, 26. 

in life, 160. 

Natukal and spiritual, 53. 

and spiritual faculties, 109. 



276 INDEX. 



Natural and supernatural, 108. 
Nature a part of Environment, 107. 

noiseless, 144. 
Neglect, 28, 32. 
New heart, 229. 

life, 75, 76. 
Newer laws, 260. 
Nothing out of nothing, 166. 

Old environments, 83. 
Organic and inorganic, 198, 208. 

effects, 187. 
Organisms, 52. 
Orthodoxy, 193. 

Paeasites, 184. 

Parasitism, 187. 

Patience, 44. 

Patient endurance, 72. 

waiting for spiritual growth, 232. 
Peace on earth, 45. 
Perfect life, 265. 
Perfection, 264. 
Personal helplessness, 142. 
Pessimism, 146. 
Photograph prints, 149. 



INDEX. 277 

Phrases, 180. 

Physical Laws, 17. 

Pleasure -giving, 33. 

Possibilities of Life, 29. 

Power over temptation, 84. 

Powerlessness of man, 245. 

Practice, 78. 

Preparation, 93. 

Pressure from without, 221. 

Prize within reach, 210. 

Protoplasm, 167. 

Pure in heart, 37. 

Purification, 14. 

Purified spirit, 86. 

Pursuit of happiness, 155. 

Put on Christ, 233. 

Putting off and putting on, 35. 

Keflecting the character of Christ, 223. 
Eegeneration, 77, 117, 118, 198. 
Eeligion, 47. 

comes by law, 96. 
Best, 150. 

and Peace, effects of former causes, 227. 

how found, 183. 
Eestlessness, 224. 



278 INDEX. 



Revelations in Nature, 15. 
Reversion to Type, 28. 

Salvation, 36. 

is of man's choice, 263. 

wrought out, 184. 
Sanctification, 43, 161. 
Science an aid to faith, 99. 

and Religion, 13. 

and Revelation, 16. 
Scientific faith, 10. 
Search for Truth, 193. 
Seek first the Kingdom of God, 207. 
Seizing opportunity, 246, 257. 
Self-denial, 87. 
Sense of sight, 37. 

of sound, 37. 
Separation from the love of God, 254. 
Serving two masters, 92. 
Side by side with Christ, 95. 
Sin, 64. 

Slights looked for, 182. 
Solidity, 11. 

Soul to be cultivated, 36. 
Soul's life in God, 145. 
Spirit of Christ, 71. 



INDEX. 279 



Spirit of the living, 111. 
Spiritual communion, 162. 

death, 63. 

Environment, 132-137. 

Influence and Force, 171. 

Life manifests itself, 203. 

Life, The, 10, 27. 

longing, 217. 

possibilities, 202. 

Stature, 49. 

world, The, 21. 
Spiritual-world lessons, 243. 
State of Death, 249. 
Stature, 48. 

Subterranean passage, 80. 
Sudden conversion, 250. 

death, 77. 
Supernatural, The, 9, 10, 14. 



Tempee, 70. 

Test for Life, 203. 

Theology, the Science of God, 165. 

Touchiness, 157, 235. 

True life lies in reality, 230. 

Truth a revelation, 259. 



280 INDEX. 



Uncertainty of current beliefs, 258. 

Uneasiness, 33. 

Uniqueness of Christ's Kingdom, 208. 

Unknown God, 61. 

Unlovely tempers, 70. 

Unloving and unloved 211. 

Unnoticed kindnesses, 243. 

Unrecognizableness, 174. 

Unselfish love, 63. 

Unspiritual man, 59. 

Voice and Echo, 112. 

Wasted life, 90. 

We love because He loved, 99. 

Widening Environment, 104. 

Will power, 213. 

Words of Life, 212. 

World's Problem, The, 234. 



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